Natural's Not In It
by obstacle1
Summary: Set in the Marauders' sixth year. Remus' Hogwarts days are jeopardised when he bites another student. Follow his trials and tribulations with James Sirius, and Peter, and a certain redhead... Green eyes, monsters and jealousy! R/L
1. Return The Gift

Chapter 1: Return The Gift

"–and Peter, he's awake!"

Remus always returned to consciousness in stages after a transformation. At first, he would become aware of a uniform ache through his body. Then, as the pain would localise in his extremities, the ringing in his ears would begin. It sounded similar to a Wizarding Wireless between two stations; his ears were adjusting from some wolfish frequency, passing through walls of static before his human hearing returned in earnest.

"–take James' legs and we'll get out of here!"

His hands and feet, subject to the worst of the lycanthropy's distortion, would shake and spasm for a few minutes. A sheen of sweat would break out over his body, reacting to the pain of bone, tissue and sinew attempting to reorder itself.

"I'm trying –"

His eyelids, gummed with sweat and dirt from a night's running in the forest, would struggle to open. A clicking noise would indicate his jaw periodically relaxing and tensing, testing and familiarising the smaller, smoother enamel blocks housed in his mouth. His spine would pop back into place – which was a longer and more painful process than usual, as if he was being bound by something…

"–keep the wound elevated!"

The pain in his limbs would then subside and the leaden feeling of fatigue, and numbness, would set in. Shortly afterwards, the keening noise would quieten. His hearing returned gradually. A headache would crystallise behind his eyes and remain for most of the day, something he had to remind James and Sirius of whenever they complained he didn't suffer through hangovers to the degree they did. Remus chuckled inwardly. He'd once remarked that the morning after the full moon was ten times worse than a night of heavy drinking. Sirius had taken this literally and attempted to drink ten times as much as James and Remus – in what he assured them was a noble attempt to empathise with Remus' plight – one night when the gang had snuck to Hogsmeade to celebrate their first weekend back at Hogwarts. It resulted in a decidedly unresponsive Sirius the next morning, who was slung over James' shoulder and rushed to a none-too-pleased Madam Pomfrey. After being berated for such irresponsible behaviour, and the warning that a repeat performance would warrant a trip to McGonagall's office, she had relented and shown James a spell to counteract the effects of blood poisoning.

"Next time you forget your wand on a full moon, you'll wish you were Snivellus!"

Smell and then taste came back next. He took a deep breath, feeling a painful tightness on his lungs, and found the scent of organic damp that was characteristic of the first hours of a day spent outdoors. Running his tongue across his teeth dislodged flakes of rust, and Remus shuddered. The coppery tang of dried blood covered his gums. This wasn't unusual – the wolf, angry at being denied prey, often snapped at its own arms and legs, desperate to soothe the bloodlust that drove it to near madness. So Remus would wake with fresh scars once a month, signs of self-mutilation.

He could hear a quiet dawn chorus from behind him. Much closer were laboured breaths. This was strange, as there was nothing to suggest he was moving, other than the lightest of breezes playing on his face.

His left eye opened at last. There were a thousand pricks of dew, and the lilt of sunlight ghosting up the hillside, toward a huge, medieval castle, framed by a dark sky that touched the western lip of the world. James, Sirius and Peter were absent from this morning tableau.

Remus rotated his jaw, causing a loud crack. He winced slightly, and tried to speak.

"Ach! My tongue feels like a fish."

There was no change to the cadence of snatched breathing. This was also strange; the other Marauders were usually talkative on the walk between the Shrieking Shack and Hospital Wing; Sirius making ceaseless jokes – none of them good – to distract Remus from the pain and shame of his condition.

Remus looked down, ignoring his protesting neck muscles, in an attempt to orientate himself. His arms and legs were cocooned in rope, which explained the tightness on his chest and persistent numbness. He appeared to be floating ten feet above the ground, near-horizontal. A leaden weight settled at the bottom of his ribcage, and he tried to coax his limbs to move in a feeble attempt to break his bonds.

His lurching only served to disorient him further. Blood began pooling in his head, accompanied by spikes of pain from his legs, knees locked together, as he spotted a mass of black hair in his periphery. Sirius, his eyes oddly hard, sent a red thread of light shooting at Remus, who lost his grasp on consciousness, and knew no more.

* * *

AN: Reviews are always appreciated, thanks! Working with short chapters enables me to update several times a week, any suggestions are more than welcome as I have no concrete ideas on how the story will pan out beyond chapter 5


	2. Curtains

Chapter 2: Curtains

Remus woke in the all-too-familiar confines of the Hospital Wing. He cracked an eye open, taking in the whitewashed walls, a privacy curtain spelled with a Notice-Me-Not charm, and a brace of torches in wall brackets, charmed to burn twice as bright as the others in Hogwarts' corridors. Most of Hogwarts' torches were charmed to hold everlasting fire, which would flicker and lend a pleasant orange hue to castle's stone walls. These torches gave out constant white light, throwing Remus' scars and bruises into sharp, pallid relief.

Recovery involved several potions, which never tasted any better, rolls of bandages, and Madam Pomfrey tending to him with pity in her eyes.

He was used to the glances of pity from James, Sirius and Peter; they were tempered with resolve, and he knew that the pity was reserved for the wolf, not for him. It was still difficult though, when an adult looked at him, to see pity and coolness in their eyes. The sheltered lifestyle of Hogwarts, where he could live covertly under Dumbledore's protection, allowed him to enjoy some semblance of order, and happiness, in his daily life.

On occasion, when he was ensconced in his four-posted bed, struggling to fall asleep, he'd plan his future after Hogwarts. Freed from the stigma of his condition, he'd been able to delude himself that he had a future to look forward to, with a job to match his exemplary grades, and kept in contact with James, Sirius and Peter, as they all grew older together. These reveries never lasted for more than a few minutes, and then he'd feel disgusted with himself for his lapse, as the direness of his predicament took shape again.

Voices, damped through fabric, sounded on the other side of the curtain. Remus frowned. He was never this lucid waking after a full moon, even if his memories remained indistinct. Madam Pomfrey's absence was also strange. She'd usher him to his bed when he walked in around dawn, and be there when he woke several hours later, arranging vials of potions and meeting his claims of full health with severe looks.

Remus swallowed, and again there was the taste of copper in his mouth. Grimacing, he looked up and down his arms, searching for self-inflicted bites. His limbs, still pale against the bed sheets, were unscathed. His chest, for all the scars and darkened, damaged skin, was intact; there was no evidence of fresh bites or puncture wounds. A growing horror filled him.

He swung his legs off the bed, his mind working furiously to fashion any number of reasons why he'd woken with dried blood caked to his gums that wasn't his. Maybe the wolf had bitten its back. Who knew how flexible magical creatures were, anyway? His fingers traced the contours of his shoulder blades and spine, finding only old scar tissue. Maybe James and Sirius' concentration had dwindled, and they'd given the wolf too much space, allowing him to snaffle a woodland treat – a mouse or bird, perhaps. This had happened before, he told himself. He'd woken with matted feathers or fur in his mouth on occasion. Not a sensation he could forget quickly, despite his best efforts.

Remus scratched at his teeth and gums until they bled, looking just as feral as he had the night before, feeling for any sign of fur or feather, anything to show he'd bitten something rather than someone…

There were still hushed voices coming from the other side of the Hospital Wing. He pulled his privacy curtain back and looked across the room, clad in threadbare linen pyjamas. A similar curtain hid a bed near the far wall.

Attempts to explain the source of the blood were growing far-fetched. Perhaps the other Marauders had pranked him? Even they could see this would be in poor taste. He was sure Sirius wouldn't want to antagonise him; their friendship had suffered following the Snape incident before Christmas, and although both had acted after the New Year like nothing happened – Remus knew Sirius would never apologise – there was no more carefree joking between them. A line had been crossed and Remus didn't know if things could return to their previous state.

His mind was clutching at shortening straws. Perhaps a new treatment for werewolf bites and scratches had been found, and Madam Pomfrey had already administered it. Never mind that his parents had sat him down the morning after his first transformation, and told him in no uncertain terms, that there was no cure for the wolf inside him, and that Wolfsbane Potion cost more than the rent did.

Remus stood on unsteady legs, fingernails pitted with blood and made his slow way across the Hospital Wing, between the rows of beds, their headboards pushed back against enamel-white walls. The disgust he felt when he normally thought about his condition had increased a hundredfold. Ever since he'd been bitten, his parents, his friends, even Dumbledore – they all told him he wasn't like Fenrir Greyback, or other werewolves who made no attempt to protect others from their wolfish half. Liked the majority of werewolves, he posed little threat to others, only the misfortune to be tarred with the same brush as those who did. He'd come to terms with his condition, and hearing people voice their opinions on werewolves, just as his grandfather and the pastor had done, didn't bother him to the extent it used to.

There had been several lectures from Binns on werewolf scourges in the sixteenth century. Their undead professor had sensed a rare chance to hold his class' attention and delighted in eliciting horrified gaps from his students as he described hordes of 'foul, savages beasts' that lived only to ravage wizards and defenceless muggles alike. Peter had kindly dismissed it as 'propaganda' afterwards, sensing his discomfort; he'd received sympathetic looks from James and Sirius.

He recalled his childhood friends, perpetually slight and prepubescent in his mind's eye, and grimaced.

When they learnt he was the source of the eerie howls on the outskirts of their Kentish village, they wanted nothing to do with him.

He'd reached the privacy curtain. Shaking hands snatched at the white plastic, struggling for purchase on the smooth, synthetic material. A red fingernail, caked in drying blood, found the seam after several seconds of silent fumbling and pulled, the hoops on the rail above giving a metallic tinkle as they moved down the bar.

A rash of gooseflesh broke out across his neck, numbing the vertebrae which held the slope of his shoulders.

Two heads turned in his direction, one with a mass of wavy black hair, and the other topped with a thinning, sanding mop. Their expressions were so alien they could have been the sun and moon to Remus, meeting his stare with horrible, inhuman intensity. Behind Peter's rounded shoulders, covered in a grey sheen of sweat, a swell of bandages covering his left forearm, was James.


	3. White Ink

Chapter 3: White Ink

"Remus, we need to get going or we'll be late! And you know your father likes to sit in the front of the congregation."

The seven-year-old in question huffed as he hopped towards the chest of drawers that stood between his bedroom door and the window, trying to pull his right shoe onto its respective foot.

He looked paler and slighter than usual, sporting a large, kidney-shaped bruise on the left side of his face – evidence of his first transformation on the Thursday night just passed. Friday had been full of novel aches and pains, and although he'd spent Saturday recuperating, Remus was terribly self-conscious of his new scars and blemishes, and had begged his parents to let him stay at home.

At supper yesterday he'd told his parents there were no werewolves that went to church in the stories that he read. An awkward lull in conversation followed, before his father had gruffly informed him that it was more important for werewolves to go to Sunday service than regular church-goers, and that had been the end of the argument.

His father was serious man, with thick eyelids that gave him a look of fatigue and absent concentration. Years of financial strain had robbed his character of any levity; he would speak rarely, and only enter a conversation if etiquette dictated that he did so.

"Remus, honey, we're waiting in the kitchen!"

His mother was a petite, nervous creature who seemed to bear the doubts his father never voiced. Her hands were perpetually moving, it seemed, engaged in endless domestic chores to keep the house in order and her mind occupied. Every piece of furniture would be dusted and wiped down twice a week.

Remus hurriedly reached the chest of drawers and with a hand on the furniture, was able to steady himself and slip his shoe on at last. A small pair of eyes whipped around the room, checking everything was in place. Never mind that there was only a small bed with a chipped headboard, brightened by the sunlight that came careening in through the room's single window. The lack of toys and games attested his family's lack of income. His father had been a flying carpet salesman until the Ministry had prohibited their usage and distribution two years ago, citing poor safety features for the preferred means of family travel in Wizarding Britain. He'd been in and out of work since; the family's savings had been whittled down every month to keep up with the rent. Remus had no siblings. He knew his mother had wanted a daughter, to lend some balance to their family, but his father's pockets could not support another child. Aside from food, the Lupins bought almost nothing.

In fact, Remus only needed the chest of drawers for all his possessions, clothes neatly folded on the inside, and a small assortment of trinkets on top; lacking a chair, he'd do his schoolwork on the kitchen table. Some of the objects in his collection were in a better state than others, but all looked used.

There was a pack of cards, many of them peeling and curling in the corners, which included a homemade four of diamonds, drawn with a biro pen on a piece of cardboard cut to size; it was noticeably thicker than the other laminate slices.

Last year's Christmas present, a troop of painted animals, looked out over their wooden cliff. Among them was a green, snub-nosed dragon, a yellow hippogriff and a mournful horse that had once been a unicorn. In his yuletide excitement, Remus had played a little too energetically with his new animals, and joy had swiftly turned to despair as many of them broke, losing paint and limbs.

He'd had to glue them together because they were filled with sawdust, not real wood.

Connected to a thread, which Remus sometimes fancied was a thin brown snake, was the item he was looking for: his plain silver crucifix, an inch wide and twice as tall.

Remus picked up the thread, unclasped it, and looped the crucifix around his neck. When the cross came into contact with skin, a white-hot needle of pain lanced from his Adam's apple, up through his skull, and his legs gave way as he collapsed to the ground.

He shrieked in pain, his vocal chords in agony, used far too soon after his first transformation. A litter of footsteps, desperate on the pale wooden floorboards, sped into the room. Remus' father was not a big man, but his hands were huge on his son's thin frame, wand forgotten, frantically searching for the source of pain.

The hysteria in the corner was his mother.

Much of the crucifix was melting, searing itself to Remus' flesh. White ink trailed down his neck, mixing with dark blood. Whorls of candyfloss played on his skin, viscous and a strange, synthetic pale. His voicebox, ruined by heat, gave out, and Remus could only rasp brokenly.

Only the foot of the crucifix, softening quickly, remained solid. It was deceptively small, the width of a matchstick and half as long. Remus' father picked it carefully from his son's neck, and a strip of skin came with it.

The elder Lupin cursed as the metal blistered his fingers, and flicked it to the floor. A thin plume of smoke began to rise from the floorboard.

Remus rolled onto his side, pawing at his neck frantically, until his fingers were coated pink and started to burn as well. Tears of pain came fast, dripping silently onto the floor. His father stood and lurched for the doorframe. Four footsteps later, he'd returned with his wand and a desperate bark in his voice.

"_Accio silver!" _

Pink bubbles began to peel off Remus' neck and hands, forming tiny, glistening threads that met at his father's wand point. After a few seconds, the splint of silver darted from the floor to the centre of the boiling sphere, lost from view.

With the silver gone, the burning sensation internalised in Remus' muscles as heat moved behind his throat and fingernails, drawing muffled whimpers from the shaking boy.

The wails from his mother had ceased. Shock had rendered her motor skills useless; a trembling hand, splayed on the windowsill, was all that stopped her joining her son on the floor.

A snitch-sized pulsing mass had formed at the end of his father's wand. Grey, white and red streaks danced across the surface of the sphere as it swelled and contracted to match Remus' pulse, a grotesque display of inadvertent blood magic. The boy glanced up at his father; the man's typical meekness had been replaced by a haggard, panting figure, glaring at the hateful ball of metal with heat and venom in his eyes. His mouth was straight and razor-thin. Slowly he relaxed his elbow, drawing his wand back, and the silver hung in place, eerily silent, suspended like an unholy Christmas bauble. Concentration never wavering, he sized up the floating blend of metal and blood for the final time.

"_Evanesco!"_

The ball popped out of existence as silently as it had formed. The tense energy that had kept Remus' father erect left him, and his shoulders rounded, eyelids sliding down in the lethargy which so often succeeds desperate, impulsive action. The man fell to his knees and brushed a flick of brown hair out of his son's eyes. Remus could only blink tears back at him in gratitude.

The pain spiked behind Remus' eyes. He gave a plaintive moan; sure he'd start crying blood from emptied and drying tear ducts. He could see his father's face through a veil of salt, anguish locking the man's jaw. Then a fresh wave of pain, all-consuming, hit him, and he couldn't remember his name.

Remus' father stared back at his son, watching the boy turn glassy-eyed as the pain crystallised in his ruined throat. In a compassionate act he silently cast a stunning spell at his son, tears forming on his own eyelashes.

An audible lungful of air left his wife as their son went limp. He turned towards her, smiling as she managed to stand. This was brief respite as his attention returned to Remus; a weak pulse was visible in his son's darkened, swelling neck. A large, square hand, coarsened by agricultural labour, closed around a much smaller one with blackened fingertips.

There was a steadying hand on his shoulder, and then his wife's footsteps continued into the kitchen. A measured pinch of Floo Powder brought a rushed conversation with St Mungo's through the paper-thin, plasterboard walls of his home. The heel of his palm drew the moisture from his eyes into his hands.

Moted sunlight, which began to draw above the vertical, lent no brightness to the room. A waxen lustre was cast on its three inhabitants, slackening every movement. Remus' mother had returned from the Floo and knelt beside her son's sleeping body, opposite her husband. They kept a silent vigil until a pair of healers from St. Mungo's arrived.

The crucifix would leave a permanent welt, a cross-shaped ribbon of flesh between the Adam's apple and the hollow of his neck. They never went to church again. Providence didn't account for werewolves.


	4. Dasein

Chapter 4: Dasein

Static hiss filled Remus' ears as he took in James' inert form, and the rash of medical tape covering his own handiwork. Bringing his gaze back from the hospital bed, to the two Marauders facing him, Remus found himself on the receiving end of a pair of thin stares.

He turned to Peter first. The quick smile that was so characteristic of the boy had been replaced with a tight-lipped countenance; other than a momentary widening of his eyes, he stood wooden footed, looking at Remus with apathy. Both of Peter's hands hung tight to his trouser pockets. Seeing his first Hogwarts friend, who could never hide his nerves and fluster, present himself in such a detached manner, only served to unnerve Remus further.

Sirius was a different proposition. Hostility played across his features, manifesting itself in the taut muscles of his outer jaw. His eyes were the twin miniatures of his head, sharp and dark. Mimicking Peter, he did nothing, other than meeting Remus' stare, although there was little in his expression that suggested indifference.

There was a dreadful disconnect between the magnitude of the events that took place the night before and the still, silent scene Remus found himself in.

Sirius' hands were knotted into fists, a mass of wound muscle at the end of each arm, with raised tendons tracing curves from each knuckle to the wrist on the back of his hands. His mouth came up, and he made to say something. His left cheek was drawn upwards. Something ugly was forming in the back of his throat.

The weight in Remus' stomach condensed, and he couldn't allow Sirius to voice whatever acerbic quip he'd formulated, as he was wont to do when angry or provoked. He'd often play on his own temper when one of the other Marauders had done something to land them in trouble, feigning anger and more often than not, trying to stall a building grin. There was no flippancy in Sirius' countenance as he faced off against Remus, who was stricken by the coolness in his roommate's eyes; hearing what he had to say would surely eliminate any thinning, desperate hopes of redemption Remus was nursing.

This realisation had barely registered in Remus' mind before his feet were making a beeline for the nearest exit, and he bolted through the Hospital Wing's door, followed by nothing but the staccato slap of bare feet on stone.

Sirius was left standing, immobile and speechless, as a sour expression flitted over his face, as if he'd tasted the venom he'd been about to direct at Remus. It passed in a moment, and a hand found the slope of Peter's shoulder in a show of solidarity as the pair turned back to their sleeping friend. The slowing creak of the double doors Remus had left through was the only sound.

The conscious half of Hogwarts' werewolf population had exited the Hospital Wing at a full sprint, all too soon finding the downward taper of a staircase. Remus found himself in an airborne pedal, looking for all the world like a muggle long jumper, before gravity found his feet, and he careened downhill, struggling to find the sliver of a step one has to aim at when running down stairs too quickly. He escaped, by virtue of dumb luck more than any feat of coordination, with only an ungainly landing that forced him to drop to one knee. There was a momentary pause, as if Remus considered returning to James' bedside, but he seized upon his hesitation quickly and scarpered down the corridor.

The smaller part of his brain which hadn't been disabled by terror knew that fleeing was a shameful, reprehensible thing to do. But, he reminded himself bitterly, it wasn't as if Sirius and Peter's estimation of him could worsen much more.

Several minutes passed in a flurry of loosening joints and wearying limbs, as Remus traversed the castle's networks of corridors and stairs, adding to the distance between himself and the Hospital Wing. Guilt and shame had been suspended as he focused on maintaining motion, sidestepping the occasional younger student; fortunately, no one older than a third year Hufflepuff witch was in the corridors early on a Saturday morning. No notice was given to spent legs. An icy passage through the Bloody Baron, who'd followed him down a few staircases to spit insults at the bereaved Gryffindor, was scant respite for his burning limbs and lungs. A dark triangle of sweat stained the back of his t-shirt, and his breath came in ragged notes, scratching at his tender throat.

When he came to one of Hogwarts' temporary dead ends, an empty stairwell with a magical staircase winding serenely away from him, he'd turn round and retrace his steps until he found another corridor that led away from James' graven image, lying in the Hospital Wing, and scamper down it with lactic limbs.

The sprint Remus had left the Hospital Wing with had regressed to a taxing, heavy-footed jog, as muscles given no chance to recover from the activity of a full moon were mercilessly employed. He'd run out of energy corridors ago, and continued fuelled by nothing but panic and shame. Every movement was made sluggish by fatigue.

A suit of armour clipped his shoulder on the sixth floor. Remus spun and hit the floor. Stone met shinbone with a painful crack. He managed to make it to his haunches, accompanied by the chatter of shaking knees, before his ankles locked and Remus returned to ground. He lay on his back in some dusty corner of the castle, rasping as air filled his lungs. Above him was an off-white ceiling, covered in cobweb felt. He could hear the soft whisper of curious portraits.

Without motion to keep him occupied, Remus was becoming increasingly cognizant of the magnitude of biting James. His inward loathing had been compounded by the venom in Sirius' glare. A cold tremor passed through Remus as James' pallid face, made paler by a shock of unruly black hair, loomed in his mind's eye. That he was sat on a stone floor with only fraying pyjamas as protection against the February air did nothing to moderate the chills tailing through his nerves.

Remus tried to rationalise his panic; he'd known he'd bitten someone before tugging James' privacy curtain open. Logically, he told himself, it shouldn't matter who he'd bitten, the consequence of his action remained the same – the quality of life of a fellow student had been irreparably damaged by his hand, or in this instance, his teeth. This had not stopped the fear he'd felt when he tasted rust in his mouth turning to a numbing, terminal dread upon seeing James, pale and unresponsive in a hospital bed.

He'd looked to be made not of marble or ivory, but of chalk, brittle and useless.

A ludicrous notion flew through Remus' head, drawing a sharp cone of a laugh. James was better off dead. Remus had been bitten aged seven, long before the piercing self-consciousness that mars pubescence in embarrassment had set it. James' unflappable confidence attested to his childhood at the centre of a family used to easy opulence. The largest concerns he had were Quidditch and Lily Evans' opinion of him.

Remus still had vivid memories of registering as a werewolf at the Ministry of Magic. The Lupins had traipsed up to London one Saturday morning, a week and a half after Remus' encounter with Fenrir Greyback. Ministry employees hadn't bothered to hide their distaste as they catalogued another werewolf, taking Remus' personal information, fingerprints, and a vial of his blood, which they'd said would be used for tracking purposes if the need arose. He could see his father, anger colouring the man's face, and the shine of his mother's cheeks as they'd been given a raft of pamphlets, outlining his rights as a Dark Creature in Wizarding Britain, having to declare himself as a werewolf when seeking education and employment, and the legal ramifications should he bite or kill anyone on a full moon–

The rise and fall of Remus' chest stalled. New pearls of sweat formed on his forehead, sliding behind his fringe. A yellow booklet, crowded with text and the grin of a crescent moon, skipped through his memories. The soft baritone of his father's voice came next, and he remembered the pamphlets, curled and eaten through, sitting in the hearth at the end of a day that had begun with a trip to London, and ended with a warm hand on each shoulder as his parents tried to console a fretful seven-year-old, assuring him they loved him as much as ever, all pretence of loyalty to the Ministry forgotten.

A scratched breath brought air past Remus' voicebox to his lungs again, and he sat up, berating himself for missing the crime in his – the wolf's – actions last night. He waited for the cold wash of panic, which would surely accompany the realisation that he was now wanted by the Ministry. It didn't come. So Remus stood, for want of something better to do than lie on a cold hallway floor, tickled by dust while he mourned lost friendships. Stiffening muscles came back into motion with a burn. Damp fingertips trailed along cracked wallpaper, offering balance when a leg couldn't.

The corridor ended in a stairwell and a quantity of flecked, sour air between the sixth and seventh floors. A magical stairway, steered by invisible thread, drifted down to meet him, slotting between the wall and an ancient stone balustrade, which was pitted with age, the railing a broken row of tall, granite fingers, several missing or severed, with fragments of rock lying nearby. Remus knelt by the balustrade and picked up a wedge of rock, no bigger than a pebble, and turned in over in his hands, delighting in the cold, coarse rub of split stone as it left pockmarks in his palms. A fumble left the rock between his bare feet. He placed a hand on the banister, which crackled in its wall socket, adding grains of stone and plaster to the detritus on the floor.

Remus walked to the expectant flight of steps, wincing when his feet found stone crumbs underfoot. A nervous minute followed as the staircase began to move, and he sat not trusting his feet on the ascending swing of one of Hogwarts' many magical elevators. Fortunately the charms placed on it hadn't been affected by the slow passage of time, and Remus came safely to the seventh floor, beginning his slow lope down a more familiar corridor, which ended in a corner and a painting he was well acquainted with.

This painting presented a forest clearing at night, framed by a bank of evergreens. Two brooding vampires sat at the centre of this verdant bowl, facing off over a chessboard on high-backed chairs, which would have given the painting an aspect of gothic menace if Remus wasn't familiar with its perpetually worried subjects, Slavomir and Ian.

The seventh floor corridor he was walking down formed part of the prefect patrol route he and Lily would retrace every other day. The portraits in this vacant part of the castle were particularly talkative, striking up conversation whenever the occasional student wandered through, floors above their common room and classrooms.

The pair had been painted in the seventeenth century, as they would tell Remus and Lily proudly, for age was a sign of prestige amongst Hogwarts' painted population, and they'd often be found bragging to their more recent neighbours – a softly spoken monk who sat on a stone parapet overlooking a Nordic fjord, and a widow, half her face lost to shadow, who spent her days lamenting the untimely loss of her kind and valiant husband – in tones that suggested they'd given very little thought to humility in four centuries.

The flipside of their impressive age was of great concern to the vampiric duo. Although it had never been exposed to direct sunlight, the centuries their painting had spent on a Hogwarts wall had faded its colours somewhat, and the black, starless sky they'd been painted under so long ago was now a pre-dawn slate. Both vampires lived in a state of terrible anxiety, terrified the sun would rise any day over their nocturnal tableau and bring about their demise.

Occasionally either Slavomir or Ian would manage to convince themselves the first ray of sunlight had found their clearing, which would result in a frenzied scramble to the shaded periphery, chess forgotten as the vampires hurried for cover, their tastefully gothic capes flapping behind them in a manner reproduced seconds later by any number of frightened bats. They'd cower in the shadows cast by the border of trees, voices full of panic, causing scores of the nocturnal creatures, silhouetted by the paling atmosphere, to flit from the tree canopy out of the painting's frame, upsetting the usually placid monk; the widow's lamentations would be punctuated by shrieks and profanities directed at the alarmed vampires. After snippets of shouted conversation, and repeated assertions that the rogue sunbeam hadn't been sighted again, an exhausted pair of vampires would return to their chairs, with worried glances thrown towards the grey ceiling of their painting as the chess resumed. Complaints to match the widow's dirges would ensue, as Slavomir and Ian told the Gryffindor prefects – who were in fits of laughter by this time – about the ailments a pair of aging and anxious vampires had to endure, of which there was no shortage.

Slavomir's most common complaint was that he'd taken on some of the faded paint, and was definitely yellower than he had been three decades ago, a prominent concern, given that vampires were famed for their pale complexions. Remus and Lily would give him their most flamboyant condolences, until one began giggling and the other would join them quickly. Ian had nicknamed him the Czech Canary and took no small pleasure in baiting his undead companion, until Slavomir retaliated by playing on Ian's greatest insecurity – his name. The two sixth years had once offended the temperamental vampire when they'd sagely agreed with Slavomir that Ian was a rubbish name for a vampire. He'd refused to speak them for a week, only breaking his silence to inform them of his prestigious skills in arcane magic and threatening to summon shades and ghouls to haunt the patrolling prefects in their sleep.

Remus had eventually mollified their disgruntled friend by remarking on the similarity between Ian and Ivan, and suggested that perhaps Ian was related to any number of famed and feared bloodsucking Ivans. This had, in rather predictable fashion, sparked a new argument between the undead pair, as Ian narrated increasingly fantastic vampiric legends, all of them featuring a celebrated Ivan, who lived in a huge medieval castle in the primeval forests of Transylvanian, and spent his nights feasting on the blood of fair Romanian maidens, who seemed to be the only creatures Ivan would ever encounter. Slavomir steadfastly refused to believe Ian was of the same Slavic creed as him, and anyway, his great-uncle Zlatimir had once bitten a Prussian Duke, which he assured Remus and Lily trumped any tale Ian could fashion.

Seeing their friend approaching, Slavomir and Ian became increasingly animated and excited, failing to notice his leaden footsteps and abject expression.

"Remus, my mortal man!"

"Tell Ian here he's not allowed to castle, he's already been in check –"

"– where's Lily?"

The slow tread of Remus' feet didn't waver, oblivious to the clamours above him. There was only a slight upward tilt of the head, absentmindedly lifting toward the noise, but not enough to compensate for the slope of his neck and chin, tucked tight to his Adam's apple.

Slavomir and Ian struck matching theatrical poses, heads turned from Remus' receding back in mock outrage; they were sure he was toying with them. When it became clear Remus wasn't going to respond, they hastened to the gilded edge of their painting to watch him, worry stalling their incessant bickering. He came to rest in front of a bare, nondescript stretch of wall, devoid of magical paintings. Light muttering reached Slavomir and Ian while he paced up and down in front of his chosen spot, a hand combing through brown hair, eyebrows dropped in concentration. An oak door, set with dark bolts and a black lacquered handle his fingers closed gently around, materialised, and Remus disappeared through the solid wall of Hogwarts, the door joining him in quick succession. There was nothing to suggest he'd ever been in the corridor, other than a pair of bemused vampires, who were silent until Ian shrieked, claiming a ray of sunlight had hit a branch on the far side of the clearing, and the painted palaver began again.

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AN: Big thank you to meow for the first review. Much appreciated!


	5. Drifting Deeper

Chapter 5: Drifting Deeper

Remus slipped through the doorway into the Room of Requirement. A muted click indicated the door had closed behind him. He wasn't in the habit of coming to the Room of Requirement alone. On the rare occasion he had, it was blazoned in distinctive red and gold patterning which covered the walls and furniture. Today muted shades of blue and white were thrown over the walls. They did little to hold Remus' attention. Chivalry and daring, he supposed, hadn't featured in his actions much lately.

The only window was at the far end, opposite the door Remus had entered through. It gave little light. A ring of torches, set high into each wall, compensated for the lack of natural lighting. Dancing shadows, adhesive and black, hugged the only furniture in the room – a four poster bed and a sink below a mirror stained tobacco by flecks of rust, which held its twin reflection. A chipped mug with toothbrush and toothpaste balanced on the ceramic edge of the sink between two taps. Remus padded toward the sink, wincing when he found himself in the mirror, looking as tired as he felt. He did think, however, the freckles of rust he'd been given suited his pale features.

A latent hiss sounded as the taps sputtered and gave water. Remus brushed his teeth and spat, flakes of brown and red appearing in the sink to match those on the mirror. There was pink froth on his teeth, lacquered red patching his gums. Chills flew through limbs and pitted, shivering wrists as he looked at the crystalline pieces of James' blood with awful fascination.

Stoic pride would not permit Remus to cry in front of others, even if they were only paintings. But here, alone in a room with bare blue walls, tears came to his eyes, full of hot salt. He spat again and bit the doughy flesh of his inner cheeks until his own blood mixed with James', nauseated by the sensation of his friend's blood in his mouth. The sound of retching filled the room for a moment. Remus could only manage a series of dry heaves before his knees failed him again, and he made his ungainly way to ground. Fatigue kept him there for some time. Viewed from underneath, the cream pillar supporting the sink resembled a smooth, ivory neck tapering upwards into a rounded chin. Remus shivered.

Stillness was interrupted by a fabric rustle behind Remus, as the Room reminded him of the bed it had thoughtfully provided. He took the hint, smiling at the gesture, and shuffled the few feet to the bed. A hand, almost lost in thick duvet, helped him get up and roll under the covers, to the relief of his lactic limbs. Exhaustion more than compensated for the snapping anxieties than filled Remus' head, and sleep claimed him in short order as the torches dimmed. The only movement came from folds of shadow, which would occasionally scurry out from under the bed, flitting across floorboards before a torch caught them and they returned to the darkness by the same route, safe beneath the oak bed where Remus drifted deeper into unconsciousness.


	6. Pop

Chapter 6: Pop

A week before his eleventh birthday, Remus was greeted by a spectacle at breakfast. His father sat at the head of the kitchen table, as was his custom, conversing with a venerable wizard in hushed tones. The older man was dressed in lurid green robes, upon which scores of animated snitches flitted to and fro across their fabric field. He sported an impressive beard which ended in a point halfway down his chest. Remus was taken aback by this marvellous wizard who could hardly have looked more out of place in the dismal, cramped room. He seemed perfectly at ease, with one hand on a chipped mug of some hot beverage, and the other making placating gestures to Remus' father, who in a quirk of spirit was gesticulating to his guest, forgoing his typically reserved manner.

Observing this exchange was Remus' mother. She was stood between the sink and the doorway. Remus was distressed to see her hands were periodically clenching and unclenching, fingers rubbing new wrinkles into each other – a nervous mannerism she had adopted. He determined their guest must be an important man, to elicit these responses from his parents, and began to approach his mother to ask who he was.

The elderly wizard looked up at this moment, and spotted Remus lurking in the threshold of the room. A smile made his beard twitch.

"Remus, is it?" he enquired, lifting an eyebrow in a convivial manner.

"Yes – Yes sir", Remus responded, determined to remember his manners in front of his parents.

"Excellent!" he announced to the peeling wallpaper. Remus' mother gave a start, surprised by the relish in her guest's voice. The man in question came to his feet with surprising guile, manoeuvred his chair and approached the youngest Lupin, stooping in an attempt, which proved unsuccessful, to reach the boy's eye level. Remus was fascinated by the beard, cream and tobacco, which greeted him. A hand came out and he offered a limp grip in response, nervous to be the centre of attention.

"I'm Albus Dumbledore", the beard said with a twitch and a dip. Remus lifted his head, chancing a look at this fantastic man he'd found in his kitchen.

"The new Headmaster of Hogwarts", Dumbledore added, with an exaggerated tilt of the head, suggesting he was letting Remus in on an important secret. There was a faint note of pride in his voice, more to do with the prestige of his teaching establishment than any self-gratification. The young boy, thrilled at his involvement in adult conversation, gave a gap-toothed grin in reply, growing suddenly bold.

"Why are you here?" he asked, all interest, failing to notice the reprimand on his father's face.

Dumbledore chuckled at his small interrogator. With a flourish to match his extravagant robes, a hand disappeared behind green folds and reappeared holding a thin letter which had only the name, Remus, written on the front in slanted, cyrillic font.

"I brought this for you, Remus", Dumbledore said by way of explanation, and put his hand forward again. Remus almost snatched at the letter, any shyness forgotten.

Small hands turned the letter over, finding an insignia in red wax which detailed a lion, a snake, a badger and an eagle, one in each corner and all in miniature, surrounding a capitalised 'H' in the centre of the crest.

"Can I open it?" he asked. Dumbledore smiled, taking no small pleasure in Remus' growing animation.

"You certainly can, my boy."

Remus popped the wax, and found a single sheaf of enclosed parchment, with a short missive by a different hand to whoever had written his name.

_Remus Lupin_

_By special consideration of Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, Order of Merlin First Class, Chf. Warlock, International Confed. of Wizards, you have been deemed fit for enrolment at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry._

_Artemis Poise_

_Department of Education_

_Ministry of Magic_

A frown came to Remus' features as he read the letter, and tried to respond.

"Mister – Headmaster Dumbledore, the thing is, I've been told I can't go to a magical school, because I'm a – I'm not allowed", he managed, fearful of admitting his lycanthropy to the old wizard.

"I am aware of your condition, Remus", Dumbledore said flatly, pity deepening the wrinkles on his forehead.

Remus would normally panic when an adult discovered he was a werewolf, but he found no malice in the kindly Headmaster's expression. Glancing at his parents for guidance, and receiving two nods of encouragement, he stilled his fears. He turned back to Dumbledore.

"Fortunately", Dumbledore continued, his jovial countenance returning, "I have managed to waive some of the Ministry's regulations concerning werewolves, and am happy to offer you a place at my school". A smile lifted his beard. "You may, of course, decline this offer",he finished, with a wink and a smile that suggested he knew Remus would do anything but.

Something euphoric was building in Remus. He managed to shake his head, bringing a laugh from Dumbledore, who placed a hand on the shoulder of his newest student.

"Wonderful! I'll inform the Deputy Headmistress, and she'll pop round tomorrow to tell you everything you need to know about starting Hogwarts. I must warn you, she's not much of a dog person", Dumbledore declared, grinning.

Remus burst into laughter, as if Dumbledore making light of his condition was the funniest thing ever. A sob escaped from his mother as she watched her son with wide, shining eyes, her husband sporting a grin to match Dumbledore's. Laughter, buoyed by relief, rang round the tiny kitchen for some time.


	7. A Means to an End

Chapter 7: A Means to an End

The window held the dark blue of late afternoon when Remus woke. He'd slept for most of the day. Sitting up brought tugs from stiff muscles. With a pillow placed between his back and the headboard, he sat, cross-legged and motionless, duvet drawn up to his waist, for some time.

Tiredness had dulled his senses that morning. Panic and flight had stricken the worst of the guilt from him as he escaped the Hospital Wing. Now rested and recovered, there was nothing to divert Remus' attention, which turned inward.

A new, archer dread began to fill him. Remorse for biting James grew and settled.

Most of the student body saw him as the quieter, forgettable member in their gang of four. James and Sirius were known for their boisterous antics and Peter for his nervous, incessant chatter, but Remus made little impact on the collective consciousness of the school. Even when a Marauder prank drew the ire of a group – usually their Slytherin counterparts – James and Sirius would be targeted first, and Peter if he could be caught alone, something he tried to avoid. Remus had come to the school with the rationale that going unnoticed would allow him to stay there longer. Dumbledore's offer was all well and good, but somebody would work out he was a werewolf sooner or later. This attempted detachment turned out to be all intention, however. When he'd been exposed to the welcoming nature of the other Gryffindor boys, and the unspoken agreement that they were going to be friends, and very good friends at that, his efforts at distancing himself became increasingly half-hearted. Weak excuses concerning his monthly disappearances – an ill aunt, family weddings – were quickly picked up on, but to have friends, real friends he could joke with and confide it, was a cutting reminder of how his childhood should have panned out, and one he couldn't deny himself. So he became friends with James Potter, Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew. Peter had guessed the cause of his disappearances in their second year, and he said he didn't care either way. James and Sirius had echoed his sentiments. He tried to tell them how grateful he was for their support, how wonderful it was to live without the weight of solitude, but they would always chide him and say that anyone would have done the same in their position. Those halcyon weeks following the revelation – that there were people who would accept him for who he was – were the happiest he could remember.

Thick swallows came from Remus as Sirius' glare, full of spite, came to the forefront of his mind. He wanted to colour the blame on Dumbledore, to curse the Headmaster for putting foolish notions of acceptance in his head years ago. This was, he knew, an unreasonable view, and a weak attempt to shift responsibility from himself.

He could plead that he wasn't culpable because he wasn't in his right mind as the wolf, but it would be futile. Every werewolf had a responsibility to prepare for the full moon, to isolate and restrain them to minimise risk to other people in the vicinity. It certainly hadn't featured in Sirius' mind when he'd come face to face with a panic-stricken Remus that morning.

When the other three mastered their animagi transformations, in the summer term of their fourth year, he'd been so touched by the gesture that sense and precaution had been forgotten by four ecstatic Gryffindors. On reflection, intentionally placing himself in proximity to James, Sirus and Peter every transformation, regardless of animagus abilities, was folly. A pair as reckless as James and Sirius was bound to slip up, given a couple of years, and present easy snappings for the wolf.

Stirrings of self-pity came as Remus considered his predicament. Anger followed in short order. Focusing on his own misery when James had been hospitalised was poor penance.

In a sudden fit of disgust, at both his action and character, Remus flung his bedcovers off and stalked across the room to the wall. An arm coiled back and lashed out at a stone brick, the hand landing with a crack. The hand came back, tokens of pain behind each knuckle. He hissed in pain and held the stinging digits to his chest. A bark of laughter came forth, thrown out at nothing, for his juvenile antics. Remus returned to the bed and sat on its edge.

More of the Room's magic had been at work while he'd slept. A folded set of his clothes, with his wand on top of the neat pile, lay at the end of the bed. He stood again and dressed himself, before returning to his bedside perch.

Reminiscence continued. Distant mornings spent at Sunday school came back to Remus. They had slowly worked through the New Testament, and the pastor would tell the small circle of children, some enthusiastic, others too young to feign interest, that they were 'God's children'. He was under no illusions now as to what his existence entailed. He was as much one of God's children as the criminals that lined the cold walls of Azkaban. If there was a heaven and hell he was headed for the latter. The best he could hope for was nothing.

Unbidden thoughts and ideas borne from terror caught him, passing through a young lifetime of social conditioning, and vague, hapless clutches at what he had never named, but supposed must be his moral foil. The sense of nausea he felt when he thought about biting James grew. He fancied he could taste it as bile in his throat, but then again, that was probably his body reprimanding him for physical exertion coupled with a full day of fasting. A sandwich, filled with meat and peppers between thick slices of bread, appeared on a china plate next to him. He had no appetite.

The wolf, Remus realised, did not flatter and pretend. It was never embarrassed. It never questioned its own function. It possessed none of the hideous, manifold contradictions a human being did, constantly stretched between principles of law and a desire to return to the cave. The wolf was no worse than stones or flowers or stars in the sky. It existed only to sate its hunger. The blame rested on him alone. He had reason and foresight. He could prevent any harm befalling anyone. He could immobilise himself in a room only he could enter every full moon. Dumbledore probably expected him to do so. He had not been responsible or stringent enough. As a result, he'd effectively ruined the life of one of his closest friends.

Remus remained in a welter of guilt, sitting absolutely still, for some time. There was little colour left in the window now. The ring of torches grew brighter in response. Eventually he stood.

Permanence came to Remus' expression. His features hardened; his eyebrows dropped a fraction and set themselves above the twin arches of his skull. His eyes looked at nothing. The bone of his jaw rose and held. The muscle found in the triangle beneath the chin and above the neck shrunk and stiffened. His Adam's apple, a pebble behind skin, sharpened and gained definition. If a stranger saw him they could well believe he had never spoken. The line of his mouth was absolute.

There was nothing of the martyr, who stands proud and squared-shouldered in his final moments, in Remus. His head was bowed, the twin muscles of his neck thrown into flickering relief. Only the skin, elastic pale around the knuckles of his good hand, suggested any internal struggle as he skulked out. The door closed behind him with the same muted click that had accompanied his entrance.

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AN: Sorry for the short chapters. The next will be 3 000 + words with lots of interaction between Remus and Lily. Any comments, positive or negative, would be great!


	8. He Would Have Laughed

AN: Should have three chapters up in as many days. A review or two would be great.

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Chapter 8: He Would Have Laughed

Lily Evans was patrolling the second floor corridor on prefect duty. Remus Lupin, the other sixth year Gryffindor prefect, hadn't been in the Common Room earlier that evening. There had been no sign of any other Marauder either so she'd left alone, resigned to a dull evening in the chilly corridors of Hogwarts.

Not a single wizard, witch or ghost was to be seen in the first hour of her solitary prowl through the eastern wing of the castle. A strange stillness had filled the castle; even the more affable portraits who shared a conversation with patrolling prefects were more subdued than normal, including Slavomir and Ian, who were focused on a rather close chess match, and would only tell Lily that they had been ignored not once, but twice, by a haggard looking Remus, wondering aloud what they had done to deserve such cold treatment. Questions on the cause of Remus' distress and his whereabouts were ignored by the easily distracted pair. Lily completed the first circuit of her patrol, acutely bored, and decided to deviate from her usual route, knowing she'd be chastised if she met any other prefects, but the prospect of human conversation, even if it involved her being reprimanded, had to be better than the cutting silence and still air. If I travelled forward centuries, Lily thought, as she came to another empty corridor, Hogwarts would appear no different, save the rotting furniture and books turned half to dust.

After a while she found herself in a third floor corridor she had no recollections of. Several windows showed Hogwarts' eastern edge. The Forbidden Forest was silhouetted by echoes of the day's light. It was the last minutes of dusk, before night fell completely and in each window was darkness made visible. There were no portraits on the opposite wall. The absence of gentle snores or recycled canvas chatter condensed the silence. Her footsteps were cannonballs on the grey stone underfoot. A single doorway lay at the far end of the blank wall, close to an enchanted stairway that joined the corridor to the second floor. She could tell the door was ajar, although her eyes couldn't pick the boundary between the shadows of the room and the dark wood of the door.

As Lily approached this door her footsteps lightened and slowed. She could hear terse whispers carrying from the room, harsh and goading. Definitely not the typical student caught out after curfew, trying to sneak back to their Common Room from a broom cupboard or the kitchens. Tiptoeing to the doorway, body pressed tight to the cold stone wall, she peered round the grain of the doorframe.

A boy knelt on the floor within touching distance of the far wall, which was adorned with rows of silverware supported by black shelves; they gave the appearance of floating cups and shields in the faint torchlight. Two torches were set at shoulder height on the other two walls. The whole room, save the ceiling, was decked in oak panels and floorboards; with the rows of polished trophies it would not have looked out of place on some grand, antiquated nautical vessel.

Lily's ear brushed a smooth, metallic cool, and she shuffled back to read an appropriately silver plaque that read _The Trophy Room_. Mouthing the words to herself, she turned her attention back to the boy. He wore tattered trousers and a thin t-shirt – definitely underdressed for the bite of a February night in an unheated castle. Much of his head was lost in the half-light of the room, but a smudge of bronze hair was just visible to Lily's eyes.

Remus' fingers traced the bands of sinew and arterial muscle in his neck, learning every groove and hollow. There was a sensuality to his movements as he delighted in the vulnerability of the human form. He came to kneel in front of the largest piece of silverware in the room, a large cup engraved with the name _Tom Riddle_, and his accolade: _For Special Services To the School_. Whispering words of encouragement to himself, to steel his resolve as much as to break the leaden silence in the room, he pulled his t-shirt over his head.

Lily stared in morbid interest as a latticework of scars and bruises became visible, snaking across the contours of his back. Fenrir's bite was most apparent, a scimitar arc of ridged flesh that followed the curve of his left shoulder blade. She could pick a syllable occasionally, but the boy's whispers didn't carry to the door. The reason for his odd behaviour and obvious distress was still not apparent.

A pulse had started behind Remus' eyes. His blood felt impossibly thick and viscous. The detached calm that had possessed him on the way from the Room of Requirement had fled. This, he supposed, was what preceded death, the mind coolly accepting the imminent end while the body was shackled by terror, unable to process such intentional, measured harm. His body was coiled, elbows locked, as he reached for the cup with numb arms, beads of sweat skipping in the torchlight as they rolled down his damaged back. Every nerve supplanted by his elbow was lit up. He fancied he could already smell his useless, charred appendages as head came up, knowing he'd find the cup with blistering touch.

Lily stood transfixed as his arms struck out, stretching towards the cup. The internal battle being played out was clear to see in his trembling wrists. The boy's monologue had been replaced with a sharp keening. When his head lifted, arterial ropes standing out against his neck, she recognised his wiry, brown hair, and gasped.

There was a panicked intake of breath behind Remus, on the threshold of the room. He turned, on his feet in an instant, inwardly cursing for not having the presence of mind to cast a disillusionment charm on himself.

Half a pale face peered around the oak trim of the doorway. A green eye, widened in fear, was framed by a shock of orange hair. Lily stepped nervously through the doorway, founded apprehension on her features. Her thin figure was accentuated by her arms, clutched across her waist, drawing herself in for comfort. Remus took a step back in reply, moving perilously close to the wall of silver behind him, intent on keeping a distance of several metres between himself and Lily. There was no soft familiarity between them as they faced each other, Lily with an expression of fearful suspicion, while Remus looked openly hostile, fists clenched as he drew sharp, purposeful breaths into his scarred chest.

His eyes hardened.

"Lily", he stated, his voice too flat and measured for casual conversation.

"What–", Lily breathed, responding immediately. "What are you going to do to yourself?" She spoke reluctantly, no doubt realising that she was close to voicing her suspicions aloud, giving them a tangible, real aspect she couldn't bring herself to consider. Remus' face softened slightly; a shadow of tenderness passed across his face and he looked at Lily with something approaching affection. The moment passed, and his jaw muscles tensed, affecting a picture of grim determination, visibly willing himself to do what he had come to the Trophy Room for.

"You're going to hurt yourself", she continued with awful conviction. Remus did nothing to confirm or deny this, staring listlessly at the space between his feet.

"Maximum pain, maximum effect", he bit out, a bitter lilt to the words.

A slack shock of horror passed through Lily, and she took a half step a step forward, before catching herself and stopping, her arm frozen in a futile effort to reach Remus. A crease formed between her eyebrows as she tried to equate this spitting, antagonistic Remus with the amiable, softly-spoken boy she'd sat next to for years in Charms, and spent long hours wandering the empty corridors of Hogwarts in his company, weeding Hufflepuff fourth years from broom closets, while they shared easy conversation.

"What – why?" she probed gently, despairing at what could possibly cause such a transformation in Remus' character. He gave no indication of hearing her, save a snatched glance at her from his bowed head.

"Lily – just go away", he barked, voice still hoarse from lack of use. His first conversation of the day, he realised. "Lily – please", he said, trying to project scorn, dislike, something to get her to leave and stop making this harder than it already was. But the last syllable caught in his mouth, betraying the mounting doubt he felt.

There was hurt painted on her features, and Remus had thought his self-estimation couldn't worsen any more, but it had, and he felt awful for throwing her good intentions back at her. He wished she'd attack him, call him out for being unreasonable, for what she must take for unprovoked hostility towards her, when she'd simply tried to help him.

"Come on Remus, I thought – we're friends –" she tailed off, sounding uncertain. She took a half step backwards, and for a long moment Remus was sure she was going to leave and forsake him. The emotional core he'd failed to stall inside himself really, really didn't want her to do that.

His resolve was visibly weakening; the dreadful intent that he'd entered the Trophy Room with had left him. He looked exhausted. Lily saw his shoulders, fallen and round, and took a few tentative paces towards him. Seeing no reaction, she quickly closed the distance between them, her hands finding his wrists as she led him to the centre of the room, away from the lethal rows of silverware. He offered no resistance.

A downward tug told him to sit. So Remus sat, cross-legged on the dark wooden floorboards made smooth by innumerable footsteps, as Lily did the same. Still holding his hands, Lily brought them into her lap, worrying her lip as she saw the bruises and burst skin that darkened his knuckles. She met his stare. They remained in silence, facing each other, knees touching, for some time, illuminated by bracketed torches on each wall – giving several shadows to the pair, who looked to be sitting in the middle of a flower comprised of petals, dancing and black.

Lily was content to remain mute, trusting Remus to speak when he could. The part of her that knew he had come to the Trophy Room to maim, or possibly even kill himself dreading broaching the subject, wanted to feign ignorance, even if he'd admitted as much. So she waited in the artificial twilight, ignoring the protestations of her numb calves.

Remus was having a harder time staying quiet. Shame and relief pooled with the blood in his legs. Embarrassment began to register; it turned quickly to mortification. He was horrified that Lily had found him in such a vulnerable state, and had had to see his scars.

"These–", he tried, and his voice was rough, "these scars–", his hands made vague gestures, before slowing. Lily gave a small nod, encouraging him to continue. Remus took a deep breath and stared at the ceiling, steadying himself. The knock of blood filled his ears.

"I'm a werewolf", he bit out, his voice level. His gaze never strayed from the ceiling, determined not to look at Lily as she'd get up, excuse herself and leave, as he'd convinced himself she would. The slight pressure on his knees did not lessen. His head came down with dreadful slowness, coming face to face with a frozen Lily, eyes rounded in what he took to be horror.

"There's nothing between you and the door", he pointed out. Lily blinked, and came out of stasis in a moment, reaching for Remus' hands, which trailed uselessly on the ground, and beginning to speak all at once.

"Remus – I – I'm not going anywhere", she settled on, her face set in a determined countenance, even if her rigid posture and shaking hands belied her nerves.

This in turn, brought Remus into animation.

"Don't worry, I won't bite", he quipped, a sardonic grin about to form, before he suddenly broke down, his whole body wracked with sobs. Tears ran in rivulets down his face and neck, pooling in the hollows above his collarbone. Barks of laughter came from his throat, giving an edge of mania to his appearance. Lily responded in an impulsive manner, forgetting her fears and leaning forward to wrap Remus in a hug. His arms snaked round her lithe waist, his chin going over her shoulder, vision blurred by a veil of dampening red hair.

Her fingers wandered over old cuts, tracing faded scars; there was no malice in the act, only comfort and benign curiosity. Realising the intimacy of her actions, a blush rose, high on Lily's cheeks. She stalled her fingers and settled on returning the hug, her hands resting on his shoulder blades.

Remus had become very aware of Lily's chest rising and falling, pressed against his, as she drew deep breaths, trying to calm herself. He released her gently, and the absence of her scented touch was a physical ache.

"I bit James." His voice was hoarse but the words came quickly. "Last night was full moon, and this morning in the Hospital Wing –"

Lily clapped a hand to her mouth, though for his sake or James', he couldn't know.

"Can you remember biting him?" She asked, her manner tentative and nervous again.

"No," Remus bowed his head, eyes vacantly directed towards his lap.

"Do you have any control over the wolf?" She asked again, and there was a hint of fear in her voice this time.

"None", Remus retorted, angry that she would ask, to suggest James had bitten by his own volition.

Lily had the grace to look ashamed. A brief silence ensued.

"I won't think less of you if you leave", Remus said, "most people would." He hated himself for the plea in his voice, begging her to stay, and almost wanted Lily to run then, so he could end his base existence alone, never to see horror or fear directed at him again. There were still no footsteps receding, and he came closer to shouting at her then, insulting her, anything to get her to leave, than he'd ever admit to himself. When he met her gaze, her pretty features painted into a frown, he knew it was his turn to feel embarrassed for calling her friendship into question, but couldn't muster anything other than a vague relief that she'd chosen to stay.

"I'm dead when the Ministry finds out", he said bitterly, "they'll put me down like a common dog". He paused, and all the vitriol left his voice, "that's why I came here tonight".

"Would you have come if there was no Ministry?" Lily blurted out before she could stop herself, the desperate need to convince herself that Remus wouldn't have killed himself overriding any judgement she possessed.

"I – I don't know".

Designs on his own life were abhorrent voiced aloud; ideas that had festered inside him were poisonous on his lips, as if he realised how wrong discussing such a self-contained act with another person was. He voiced his greatest fear anyway, desperate to be vindicated or vilified in equal measure.

"Do you think I'm a coward?"

Lily shook her head, nodded once, and the tears that had filled her green eyes spilled down her cheeks. Remus felt a great ugliness inside himself, for exposing her to all the horror and self-loathing he held, for showing her the malice in the world that she could have avoided. He wanted to tell her everything would be alright, to instil a belief in her that there was more goodness than evil in the word, but knew that anything he said would be rendered trite by the awful magnitude of their situation. So he held her instead, and she felt impossibly small and fragile in his arms, hugging him back and weeping without any sign of restraint or embarrassment. He hated himself in that moment, as her hair tickled his chin and he felt her heartbeat on his bare chest, knowing she gave him more comfort than he could ever reciprocate. None of this reasoning could stop his heartbeat quickening, and his neck warming, when Lily angled her head up to meet his stare with dewy eyes.

But God, he was a mess. He'd come the Trophy Room full of spiritual and intellectual despair, prepared to forfeit his life under some pretence of atonement, of penance for his sins. And here he was, half an hour later, acting every minute of his seventeen years, stumped by the sight of a pretty girl in his arms, and the delightful tickle of her eyelashes on his neck.

A familiar sting came to his eyes as Lily looked up at him again with huge, doleful green eyes and smiled. They stayed, nestled against each other, for some time, until only the sting of salt remained. Reality eventually encroached on the pair, and Lily nursed herself out of Remus' embrace. The wholeness he felt when holding her faded, replaced with a disjointed, brittle feeling. She stood, and looked toward the rows of silverware, the newer pieces shining, the older ones specked with tarnish, all of it dancing by the flicker of torchlight.

"So, silver –"

"– yes". Remus finished her question, and knew they'd broached the subject for the last time that night, both of them too emotionally exhausted to last another conversation in a similar vein. He stepped round her and retrieved his t-shirt from the floor. He felt better than he had all day, clothed and with company. A thrill of excitement passed through Remus as Lily took him by the hand and led him out of the room, back towards the Gryffindor Common Room.

Clouds had come during their sojourn in the Trophy Room; it was a starless night. In every window was grainless, uniform darkness. Paired footsteps, and a symphony of snores coming from the portraits they passed meant the silence was not as oppressive as on Lily's patrol earlier. Their shadows lengthened and shortened periodically as they walked down corridors lit with torches, bracketed and set into the walls at regular intervals. Remus began to look forward to the magical staircases connecting these corridors. Once or twice, the swing of a staircase would bring them out to the middle of a stairwell, beyond the reach of torchlight, and there would be moments of standing darkness; a band of warmth around his hand became the only sensation. As they approached a platform and the torches grew brighter, Lily came next to him, a reference point for the closed heat in his palm, her hair brown for a second or two until flame found it and turned it to its likeness. He'd be able to pick her freckles again, dotted across the bridge of her nose and high on her cheeks. Faint disappointment would accompany the receding darkness, although he couldn't say why.

The Fat Lady opened without comment for the two prefects, mistaking their lateness for diligence. Remus and Lily's closeness allowed them to pass through the portrait hole together. They came to stand in the middle of the deserted Common Room, still holding hands. Silence returned. There was a pause before Remus spoke.

"I'm scared", he admitted, looking out into the middle distance through one of the Common Room's tall, narrow windows, well aware the source of his downfall would come from beyond Hogwarts' walls. Lily leant into him, her head fitting perfectly in the space below his chin.

"Dumbledore will protect you", she whispered to his collarbone, "Dumbledore will protect you". It filled him with curious warmth to hear her say the words, repeat them as a mantra, as much for her own sake as for his. She came onto tiptoes and kissed the corner of his mouth, which slid upwards in response, and untwined her hand from his.

"I'll see you tomorrow", she whispered. She waited on the bottom step leading up to the girl's dormitories, suddenly uncertain.

"I'll be fine", Remus said, and seeing a crease form between her eyebrows, a sign of anxiety, he added, "you don't need to worry". Lily gave a ghost of a smile and left up the stairs.

Part of Remus stood in wonder, unable to believe that a creature like Lily, pure and unfailingly kind, had accepted something as contemptible as himself. But the largest part of his being was numb with fatigue, so he sat on an old sofa facing the fireplace which held only ash, retrieved his wand from a trouser pocket, and with a laboured flick conjured a rough hessian blanket. Sleep came swiftly.


	9. PDA

Chapter 9: PDA

All around him was the ebb and flow of conversation. Most of it could be tuned out as background noise. Now and then, a peal of laughter or some harsh, hissed syllable would break the soft film of sound and find his waking mind. These momentary shocks would cause an eyelid to flutter or one corner of his mouth to pull upwards as a cheek muscle contracted. In this way, Remus came back to consciousness. There was a new voice, closer and more distinct than the rest.

"'Scuse me – Remus?"

His left eye opened by degrees. Sunday morning was pale. Three second years stood in a rough semicircle, facing the sofa. Two were familiar by sight, and Remus knew he'd learnt the name of the boy trying to address him. It nestled at the back of his skull, just out of cerebral reach. As a prefect he was often besieged by the younger Gryffindors asking for directions around the castle or angling for homework tips.

"Hey", he croaked. A nice, short word. There were paper cuts behind his eyelids. His throat was hardly better. A sharpness formed between his voicebox and windpipe, and bit at him when he tried speaking.

"Are – are you alright?" the boy with the elusive name asked.

"Yeah", Remus breathed, and the bite grew hot. "NEWTs", he managed, offering an explanation.

The trio of second years wore matching expressions of terror. They were often subjected to the scaremongering tactics of their elder housemates, who delighted in telling them the horrors of OWLs and NEWTs in excruciating detail. There was the legend of Ernest Wink, a seventh year who had not slept for two weeks prior to his NEWTs, sustaining himself on Pepper-Up potions and self-inflicted _Renervates_, until his ears caught fire and he fell into an incurable coma. To see a sixth year prefect with bloodshot eyes and unkempt hair, reduced to sleeping on Common Room sofas by what they could only assume was the legendary workload of NEWTs, left three understandably worried second years fearing for their own futures.

A stinging had localised in Remus' kidney. He decided it must be his wand; he'd forgotten to take it out of his trousers the night before. He worked his knees away from his chest and rolled over, becoming intimately acquainted with an itchy red and gold cushion his face managed to find. There were a series of pained groans, which his audience took as their cue to leave.

It registered that most of the people in the Common Room were unaware he was there, hidden by the back of the sofa which concealed him from everyone save those by the fireplace. Remus laid still, cheek pressed into the fabric of the proximate cushion. His right eye opened. Red weave filled the twin windows of his vision. It put the slightest of pressures on his eyelashes. Feeling and definition returned to his head and chest, then to his extremities. The palms of his hands managed to work moisture back to his eyes. Presently he felt he was up to walking, and stood, the pink outline of a knitted lion impressed into his cheek. Ignoring the stares of interest that greeted his appearance, he made his way across the room, not bothering to hide his dishevelled state.

His arms latched onto the banister and shuttled him up the stairs. Legs offered support, not propulsion. The oak door on the second floor appeared between a gap in the handrail. Remus considered it. A diagnostic spell revealed no enchantments or traps. He turned the brass doorknob with deliberate slowness and opened the door a fraction so a sliver of colour was visible. His wand eased through the crack, pointed at the room beyond. A whispered _homenum revelio _indicated it was empty. Pride tugged at his shoulders for using the spell, and he slunk through the doorway, ashamed.

A shower cleared his head somewhat, and he emerged from the bathroom, dressed in clean clothes, hair dark with damp. Sirius and Peter were still absent. Remus made to leave the dormitory with a backward glance but paused on the step down to the door, attention held by the row of four-poster beds. The two in the far corner were his and James'. Both had the hangings drawn round the four sides of the bed neatly, a sign house elves had been at work the day before.

Sirius and Peter's were nearer and demanded the larger part of his attention. The hangings on theirs were thrown back to show unmade beds, an immediate mess of white, twisted duvets and bed sheets; evidence of hurried departure. A basic horror seized Remus, and he saw the form of James' bandaged forearm again, unnaturally pale and hatched with gauze.

He spun and made it past the door to the sanctuary of the staircase. There was a tickle of dread between the plates of his upper back. He followed the grain of the door to the floor and sat, head held in the bowl of his hands until the sensation subsided and his breathing normalised. Sirius and Peter must have had a few hours of fitful sleep before returning to their daytime vigil in the Hospital Wing, he realised. Shame accompanied this notion. Fleeing Sirius could be put down to panic and a flight instinct. There was no justification for staying away from James.

Seeing the living proof of his damage would be difficult. Maybe James would affect disinterest like Peter, and there wouldn't be the same disgust Sirius had shown. But if Sirius hated him on James' behalf, what chance did he have of making amends with James?

Tears threatened; he swatted angrily at the loathsome, insect drops. A minute was counted in measured breaths as he composed himself. Remus came to his feet, intent on going straight to the Hospital Wing. He went down the stairs and was halfway across the Common Room before he was hailed, hearing his name for the second time that morning.

"Remus!"

The top half of Frank Longbottom was standing behind his left shoulder. He turned to greet him and the bottom half materialised. He must have walked straight past the likeable seventh-year. Both prefects, the two Gryffindors were on good terms with each other.

Remus' mind had been filled for the last day with grand notions of life and death, endless moral examinations, that making small talk seemed like a necessary and wonderfully ordinary thing to do. So he traded casual comments with Frank for a few minutes. Remus remembered Frank was seeing one of his classmates.

"How are things going with Alice?"

"Really well, actually". A thick grin threatened for a few seconds, but a frown came instead. "Except for her best friend, don't think she's too keen on me. Probably thinks I'm spending too much time with Alice. Lily, I think she's called, you know her?"

Remus' brain considered the idea of Lily for the first time that morning. It found a great many things. Not all of them were chaste. It concluded that waking up had been a bad idea.

Remus responded with a gulp. A lull in conversation followed as the teenagers contemplated the subject of Lily. Their ruminations were interrupted.

"Frank!"

Alice Prewett skipped toward her boyfriend and greeted him with a hug. Gaiety and a kind of obstinate affection were painted on her features. Remus took a half-step away from the couple, spotting as he did so the object of his thoughts, who watched her friend skip away with a long-suffering smile. Subsequently she found Remus and a real smile graced her features, relief evident in her eyes. Remus had no trouble returning her stare as she approached him. There was respite from his thoughts, he found, when Lily was around.

Lily came up short of Remus, sensing awkwardness; she reached forward and patted him on the arm, drawing her hand back quickly. They looked at each other in the white light of morning. Intimacy was easier in the dark.

"Hi", Lily began. Her fingers picked at the material of her jumper.

"Hey", Remus responded, instantly regretting the lame note in his voice. Perhaps focusing less on how Lily looked in jeans and a jumper would make him more articulate. Her blue, figure-hugging top wasn't helping him.

"It's good to see you made it through the night. You look better", Lily said, taking in Remus' profile. The curious warmth he'd felt the night before returned. Her concern at his wellbeing still surprised him. If he thought about it, there was no reason it should.

"Thanks. You – you're not look too bad either, I ––".

The skin around Lily's eyes tightened in a wince. There was no doubt now. Waking up had most definitely been a terrible idea. Carefree, aqueous laughter came from the couple next to them. Remus briefly wondered what was so likeable about Frank. He couldn't blame Lily for not responding. She looked markedly uncomfortable. A finger tapped out a beat on a denim pocket.

"Breakfast?" he chanced, hands signposting the portrait hole. There was a desperate edge to the gesture. Lily's lips split in a smile, showing rows of white. Remus decided taking conversation one word at a time was his only hope.

"Good idea", she said, visibly relaxing. She sidestepped an oblivious Alice as Remus skirted round Frank. He felt the stirrings of self-reproach, realising he'd been side-tracked from visiting James. It was quelled by his stomach; he hadn't eaten since Friday.

Remus fell into an easy step beside Lily as the pair left the Common Room in companionable silence. Lily was content just to walk, slightly closer to him than was strictly necessary. He found this increasingly difficult to ignore. His arm moved outwards, very slowly and very deliberately, mimicking the swing of a pendulum. It appended in a square hand which reached for its slender, feminine match. There was a pause, a waver at the top of the cycle just before the hands touched, and the pendulum came back down, the elbow locked back into the body and the hand fell uselessly against the thigh. Remus cursed his nerve all the way down to the Great Hall, hoping he was imagining the disappointment on Lily's face as he took a seat opposite her and began to eat.


	10. Knives Out

Chapter 10: Knives Out

The sound of deliberate footsteps, sharper and more exact than habitual stride, rose from the floor and stopped behind his shoulder. Remus looked up and saw Peter first; pointedly avoiding his stare he moved to sit next to Lily. Sirius came down next to him. A hand cupped the dome of his shoulder.

"Surprised to see you've got an appetite, mate".

The false endearment stung. The flutter of animal instinct, to take flight as he had done in the Hospital Wing, did not come this time. Remus' response was a small start of surprise. He swallowed a mouthful of eggs and sat still, preparing himself for what, he was fairly sure, wouldn't be an exchange of pleasantries. Sirius and Peter had the moral high ground; they'd just been visiting James. And if Sirius was going to continue his wilful antagonism, Remus wasn't about to start offering excuses for his behaviour. But he didn't want to sit there, all meekness, and let Sirius bully him.

An irrational desire to prove himself in front of Lily filled him. He looked at her. A familiar crease formed between her eyebrows as she took in Sirius' hostile expression. Her fork had frozen an inch above her plate, a silver broomstick in miniature; it left a grey smear on the ceramic. Her eyes flicked between him and Sirius; Peter's presence had gone unnoticed.

He knew from experience there was little to be gained from talking to a provocative Sirius. A different approach was essential if he wanted to avoid a spectacle.

"How's James doing, Peter?" he asked. Hurt from Sirius' remark softened the words. A note of plea, imploring Peter, was behind the question as he tried to coax a reaction, a response, anything from his friend.

The blond head came out of its lap and looked straight ahead at its black counterpart. There was no human element to the movement; it was so calculated, so precise that Remus wondered for a second if Peter had been put under a spell. Sharp features: a thin mouth, more white than red, and a high, thin nose were set into the face and made sharper by the absence of expression. Only the eyes, light blue, held life. They watched Sirius.

Sirius nodded once. Remus didn't know if it was a sign of approval or permission. He despaired, just as Lily had the night before, at the change that had befallen his friend. He wanted to curse Sirius for manipulating Peter, but he'd brought about the change in Sirius in the first place. Regret was dull and settled by now.

Sirius smiled at Peter's muteness. Peter's head returned to his lap, examining his fingernails; the parts of his hands in his likeness, the parts which did not curl or flex, that did not live.

Lily watched proceedings silently, feeling intrusive for listening in on a conversation she had no part in. Hurt for Remus' sake darkened her eyes as she looked at his hapless form, clearly affected by the cold treatment of his roommates.

Triangles of buttered toast were piled high on a plate in front of Remus, raised above the table on four squat legs. The whole thing looked like a hedgehog. He picked at the creature.

Sirius turned away from Peter towards Remus, but faltered halfway through the movement – at the midpoint between his roommates, where Lily sat, seeing her for the first time. He evaluated her presence.

"Evans. This doesn't concern you."

"Black". Lily bit off the surname. "I don't think it concerns you either", she said coolly.

"What did you tell her?" Sirius rounded on Remus with a carrying hiss. A group of innocuous looking third years peered down the table. Remus looked back at them. They began wolfing toast down at a rate of knots. He turned back to Sirius.

"Everything", he said flatly. There was nothing behind his voice: no malice, no upset; much like Peter's behaviour it could be credited only as a calculated absence of expression. If he spoke for longer fatigue might soften his speech. At present there was nothing.

"I drew it out of him", Lily said immediately, before Sirius could voice the anger that raised and sharpened the cords of his neck. "He didn't want to tell me at first."

It was Remus' turn to try and give messages to his opposite. He didn't want Lily to defend him or back him up, or for her to draw Sirius' anger onto herself. His efforts to convey as much were futile; Sirius was her sole focus, and she fixed him with a look that suggested she thought just as little of him, as he did of her. There was heat in her eyes.

A rare motion came from Peter, and Remus turned to the mute fourth member of their breakfast club, who was watching Lily with interest. Curiosity muddied and blunted Peter's features pleasantly as he considered her, wondering what she had to gain by baiting Sirius. Then he felt Remus' stare, and remembered his role as a passive observer; his face became closed and flat again, attention returning to the plate in front of him.

Sirius hadn't taken kindly to Lily's interference.

"I bet you're happy then, aren't you, now James is – is like this one!"

Lily flinched, lifted a fraction and moved back as if struck by Sirius' retort. Her eyes filled with the blue-green of seawater. A slender hand came up from the table, reached the pale curve of her chin, before dropping limply into her lap. She made no further attempt to wipe at tears which slipped from wet eyelashes. Her eyes were gilt with red. There was no movement: no weakening of her lower lip, no sobs caught in the walls of her throat, no gulps. She sat there, listless and inert as Peter, eyes level, vision slack, looking at Remus just to avoid eye contact with anyone else.

Remus met her watery gaze, as she gave up and visibly shrunk, shoulders rolled forward, unable to respond to Sirius' spite. Disgust itched at his core. Usually animate and articulate, when Lily drew back into herself it became apparent to Remus just how small she was. He remembered how light she had been in his arms the night before, and the same sense of vulnerability struck him as he took in her slump body. Her face and neck were porcelain pale. Flat, thin wrists supported a pair of delicate hands, pale against the blue weave of her jumper.

Peter was almost stocky next to her lean frame.

Nausea filled Remus; it was in his stomach, his lungs, between every rib. The sensation, something sick and abhorrent pulsing within, came to itch beneath the skin of his hands. Regret for telling Lily – showing her the malice and damage his existence entailed, letting her become an object of persecution, no different from himself – formed, nascent and hot. Only white hate, directed at Sirius, stopped him from becoming self-consumed again. He turned to the other boy on his bench. The tracks of muscle set either side of his spine drew up, lengthening and narrowing his profile. An impression of weight filled his hands. He wondered if he should use them.

"Leave her out of it, Sirius." Remus spat, ending with a sibilant hiss. Anger quickened his speech. The diplomatic intent he'd begun with had vanished. Dumbledore, ever observant, was watching the exchange now, from his chair at the teacher's table. Sirius faltered for a moment, no doubt expecting guilt and upset to further quieten Remus' mild character.

"Bite me", Sirius retorted, grinning at his own sardonic quip. Metal malice delighted in his eyes. Remus looked unimpressed. Any friendship or propinquital affection he felt for Sirius had soured. The nausea grew as he took in the grin, top lip peeled back to show the top row of teeth; he almost expected Sirius to burst out laughing.

Peter had begun to toy with the cutlery in front of his; a clear sign of nerves. He had made no attempt to eat, following Sirius' lead. He did nothing but sit on the bench beside a tearful Lily. A knife was turned over and over in his hands, thumbs adding to the shine of the piece.

Remus looked away from the sick smile, turning to Lily. Tears make the green of her eyes dance. He was seized by an urge to hurt Sirius.

"Do you want to go?" he went for kindness, something soft between the hissing matches, but misery lived in his voice instead.

A catching, wet breath was his reply. Lily nodded dumbly and slid round on her bench, turning away from Peter, before standing. Remus copied her movements. Sirius was content to watch Lily, defeated, head hung low, slink away. Peter's knife continued its nervous rotations.

Remus passed Sirius, eyes drawn to the band of neck between his black hair and jumper. His fingers itched. But Lily had kept walking, oblivious to everything except the hurried tread of her feet, and Remus had to jog a few steps to catch up.

One of Lily's Hufflepuff friends noticed her distress and slid back on her bench, as if to stand in front of Remus and run to console Lily. Then she saw Remus, his eyes tracking Lily's progress, pain visible his features; pulled tendons and taut muscle extending the hollows on the inside of his elbows. The girl stayed seated.

Remus fell into step next to Lily at the end of the Gryffindor table. They walked between the row of breakfasting professors, raised above the rest of the Great Hall, and the other three house tables, leaving by the exit at the far end of the hall. An arm wound round the back of Lily's narrow shoulders as went through the high stone doorway; there was no hesitation this time. She looked up at Remus with shining eyes and they began to make their way to the Hospital Wing. Retreating footsteps were swallowed by the profusion of chatter which rubbed against itself.

Albus Dumbledore stepped down from his breakfast and approached Sirius Black, who had wasn't smiling anymore.

* * *

Thanks again, meow. You made me laugh. Nothing wrong with a bit of cheese!


	11. Positive Tension

AN: This chapter's for my main reviewer Meow3594. You've been great, cheers again.

* * *

Chapter 11: Positive Tension

Remus didn't get far before sobs started coming from his left shoulder, pitiful gulping sounds.

He guided Lily into a classroom, mercifully empty on a Sunday. She slumped down the wall next to the door, sitting on the floor with her knees bent and her face in her hands. The sobs loudened and quickened; they became wet rattles, starting in her chest and rising through her throat to be muffled in her palms. Remus hovered uneasily by the door, not sure how to act. He shifted his weight from foot to foot for a few seconds until sympathy tugged at his feet, and he slid down the wall next to Lily, lying almost horizontally to accommodate her head. She nestled just below his collarbone, eyes directed into his lap, ear pressed into his ribcage.

Two damp shoulders to show. Lily seemed to have no problem crying in his presence. Remus didn't know what to make of it.

"Sirius didn't mean what he – what he said, did he?" she managed between gulps. Her eyes were huge and green either side of a pink nose, beseeching Remus to tell her that Sirius hadn't meant what he said, that it had all been senseless spite, that she wasn't a hateful, sadistic bitch.

The problem was Remus was pretty sure Sirius meant everything he'd said. He had no trouble telegraphing his emotions.

"James doesn't think you hate him", he told the top of her head tactfully. "And neither do I", he added. He didn't mention that James' adoration was more to do with misguided romantic notions than actually knowing the content of her character.

And he liked Lily because she was kind, clever and pretty–

Not that I care what she looks like, he told himself sternly.

She just happened to be – well – nice to look at. That was all.

Lily drew her sleeve around her knuckles and dabbed at her eyes.

"I wish I'd never got you involved in this", Remus murmured.

"You'd probably be dead." She chuckled bitterly.

He could hardly reply to that.

"I'm glad I found you though", she continued, her voice adopting the soft, intimate quality Remus' had taken on.

Remus looked around the room. A chalk mouse, standing on its hind paws, tail disfigured by smudges, had been drawn on the blackboard. A tray of snuffboxes lay on the desk at the front of the classroom, suggesting they were in a Transfiguration classroom. Briefly, he wondered what McGonagall, their stern head of house, would think of two of her students, one in tears, shoulders touching, sitting against a cold wall in an empty classroom.

The tears kept falling. Insecurities pooled in his throat.

"It's just – I'm sorry you had to you had get mixed up in everything just now – you know – with Sirius, and you probably wish you'd never met me now, right?"

"Don't be daft Remus. I like you."

She stiffened for a second; her head felt heavier on his shoulder and she swallowed audibly. For the second time in as many minutes Remus was had nothing to say, so he studied her movements and mannerisms closely, desperate for any sign to help him interpret her remark. Maybe her breathing quickened a fraction, but that could be wishful thinking. Lily's comment grew bigger as the silence continued, punctuated by the occasional sniffle. It bled into the still air of the room, pressed against the window panes which were milky with age. Those three, seemingly offhand syllables hung in the air above him, huge and complex, three glass chandeliers the brain couldn't process as a whole, so it would try and split them into composite parts: a chip of crystal, a candle, an arm. Every breath, every tear of Lily's was agonised over by the perturbed werewolf.

It's nothing, he told himself, don't be daft Remus, it's just platonic. She's not saying anything because she's upset, obviously.

And his stomach dipped as he convinced himself Lily was just being friendly.

He gave up counting her blinks and scanned the room again. The desks were arranged in loose rows, four deep and six across, with a gap down the middle of the room. Leather-bound volumes on Transfiguration lined a bookcase at the back of the classroom; many of them were faded by age, their red bindings loose and peeling, to show bone-white adhesive spines. They looked like so many strips of flesh. Remus shivered.

"What's wrong?"

Lily had craned her neck to look up at him with dewy eyes. The chill became a thrill.

"James." There was only sky in the windows from their position on the floor, ribbons of white and blue. "He won't want to see me."

She took his nearest hand into hers. Fingertips, slick from tears, curled round his hands, soft and enticing on the raised bones of his knuckles. She was cautious around the darkened skin.

"I punched a wall", he said softly, answering her tracing fingers.

Lily giggled.

Remus immediately wanted to make her laugh again.

Neither of them spoke for some time. Footsteps and chatter – dampened by the wall – would slide by behind them occasionally. Lily's fingers were restless in his, full of tiny strokes and squeezes. He smiled. The white in the window was steadily being burnt off; the sky would be clear blue later. An owl flew past in a blurred arrangement of feathers. The tears stopped at last. Eventually, Lily's head came off Remus' shoulder, the displaced hair tickling his neck. She moved into a sitting position, head back against the wall, and looked at him, offering an apologetic smile.

"Sorry about that", she mumbled, embarrassed now her tearful display had ended. An index finger wiped at the last of the unshed tears. Remus grinned.

"Don't be daft."

Lily giggled.

Remus stood and moved in front of Lily so their feet were almost touching. He offered her his hands; she took them, pulled herself up and overbalanced, pressed tight to his nervous form for a few seconds. Lily righted herself and turned for the door, leaving a flustered Remus with the impression of delicious softness against his front. He stood, nonplussed for a moment, blinked twice as if to rearrange his thoughts, and followed Lily.

* * *

Madam Pomfrey came out of her office as Remus and Lily came through the double doors of the Hospital Wing. Sadness lined her face; she looked far older than a witch in her late twenties as she turned to Remus.

"He's over there", she said, with an incline of the head towards the corner of the room, where a privacy curtain hung in the same place as yesterday.

No comment was made on his discharge the day before.

The sensation of heat between his fingers returned. Lily gave his hand a reassuring squeeze and released it; it fell to hang limply by his side. He swallowed; the skin around his Adam's apple tightened, clinging to every muscle in his neck. Remus nodded in Madam Pomfrey's direction. She offered a curt nod in reply before returning to the sanctuary of her office. He took a hesitant, measured step forward; it was the movement of one who comes to the edge of a cliff or a waterfall and looks down, relishing the kick of vertigo.

Lily didn't move.

A second step came. His pulse stretched to fill his ears, two knocks of blood for each footstep on the pale wooden floorboards. The synthetic screen loomed large; it became a bank of white that filled his vision, at once alien and familiar. It looked like the surface of the moon. It gave no clues as to what lay behind it. Desperately, he wished James was asleep. Then he remembered who was watching him, and his feet sped up despite himself, suddenly determined to hide any fears he had.

Remus came to stand in front of the curtain. Numbness stole through his limbs. The skull he was housed in was his only source of sensation. Beneath it was a separate set of arms and legs he had little control over. He succeeded in lifting a hand, barely concealing the trembling digits from Lily, and managed to shape it into a pincer and send it forwards. It snapped at the curtain, unable to find any purchase on the waxy material. The fumbling continued accompanied by the click of plastic hoops above him on the metal rail the curtain was attached to.

Something rustled on the other side. A bedspring creaked, the paired slap of bare feet came a second later, and then the curtain was pulled back.

Remus stood face to face with James Potter.


	12. Plans

Chapter 12: Plans

Remus opened his mouth. His throat closed and became a fist of muscle.

James just stared back, wearing an old pair of short-sleeved pyjamas Madam Pomfrey had given him. Fresh bandages snaked round his left forearm. He caught sight of Lily, standing in front of the Hospital Wing's doors, and grabbed his roommate's arm, pulling him forward and drawing the privacy curtain shut again.

They stood almost nose to nose.

The fist unclenched, and Remus began babbling desperately.

"Prongs, I'm so sorry, I never should have let you come out with me at the full moon, I know you don't want to see me, I'll turn myself into the Ministry if you want, I'll make sure nobody—"

"Remus", said James, fatigue evident in his voice, "stop".

Remus cut himself off mid-sentence.

"Have you spoken to Sirius and Peter?" James asked, tone and countenance serious. Using their real names in place of adopted nicknames didn't bode well, and Remus answered with an air of hesitancy. His hands had burrowed themselves deep into their corresponding pockets.

"In a way".

James didn't respond. Remus realised he was being vague.

"We were just at breakfast together. Sirius wasn't exactly cordial. He's made his opinion of me quite clear," Remus said, his voice sour as he remembered the recent confrontation.

James clenched his fists, his nails digging into his palms. He straightened his fingers; there were four, crescent shaped indents in a line across the belly of each hand.

"Sirius has no right – none at all – to be angry at you."

Remus was perplexed. James seemed to be saving the greater part of his anger for Sirius.

"What happened on Friday night?"

He immediately kicked himself for asking James. There was no way he'd want to talk about the night, and moreover, Remus didn't want to hear it. Whenever the others brought up his wolfish antics he'd ask them to stop immediately, ashamed at the malicious part of him which existed only to hunt and to sate its hunger, free from his control.

James was taken aback, and responded with a question of his own.

"You don't know what happened?"

Remus shook his head. Dread, tremulous and cold, formed in his stomach. James frowned and hesitated, considering whether or not to tell Remus. After a moment he began in the instinctive, easy register of an anecdote.

"Oh. Well, you fell asleep pretty early, we'd only been in the Shack for a couple of hours, at most, it probably wasn't even midnight. Anyway, you – or, the werewolf – were pretty out of it." Every third or fourth sentence, James would pause, pain tightening the skin around his eyes, finding it difficult to relive the events of Friday night.

"Sirius turned back into his human form, which we've started doing recently. I copied him."

"He was complaining for ages about being bored, and how you wouldn't change back for six or seven hours, so I relented and didn't change back to Prongs to humour him for a bit. Peter changed back too, for about half a minute, just to tell us we were being irresponsible, but you know how he's always nervous about everything, so we ignored him. He stayed as a rat the whole night though, got a bit of stick from Sirius for it."

"Anyway, so we chatted for a while about everything and nothing – girls and Quidditch, Sirius was waxing lyrical about some seventh year witch in Ravenclaw, Lizzie Shotton, I think. At some point he pulled he pulled a bottle of firewhiskey out, I don't know where he snaffled it from."

James paused and swallowed, visibly composing himself. Remus couldn't bear to look at him, fixing his attention on the wall behind James' right shoulder. With a brittle edge to his voice, James continued.

"You'd been lying dopily in the corner, asleep for ages and ages and you hadn't moved a muscle, so I thought nothing of it."

James was forcing the words out now, every shortening sentence costing him more energy as he continued, bringing his narrative to its inevitable end with a grimace.

"There's not a lot to do in that little room, so we got drunk pretty quickly. I guess we got louder and woke you up. And then you bit me."

He gave a wry chuckle, but it was a hollow, broken sound. Nausea thickened Remus' throat. He pinched the bridge of his nose, willing himself to stay calm for another minute. Silence threatened, but James started again, suddenly animated.

"Peter was brilliant though, didn't freeze up or anything, he transformed next to me while Sirius was shielding us, grabbed Sirius' wand, which he'd left on the floor, and managed to get you with a few stunning spells over Padfoot, and when you were dazed he hit you with an _Incarcerous_, which sort of worked."

"Can't remember much of what happened after that, apparently Peter stunned me as well, next thing I know I was in the Hospital Wing."

Remus processed James' recounted version of events. It was so mundane, so stupid, but he could easily picture Sirius and James doing something as dumb as getting drunk beside a werewolf. They did to seem to think they were untouchable. But James didn't deserve this. Admittedly, he'd been idiotic, and Sirius had been just as bad, if not worse for producing the firewhiskey in the first place. But to be bitten by a werewolf: tainted for life, suffering through a night of agony once a month, forced to lie to anyone outside your immediately family, treated as vermin, unable to find steady employment, let alone foster any career aspirations – no one deserved that. Remus wouldn't even have wished it on Grindelwald, had the fearsome dark wizard still been around.

Guilt came anew. Truthfully, Remus still wasn't sure he could live with himself; new, fleeting designs on suicide spun through his head. Something new and terrible throbbed behind his eyes. Every breath brought another wave of sickness. Saliva cloyed in his throat; he felt he might throw up. His legs buckled, and he wrapped a hand around the metal rail above him for support.

James, clearly troubled by Remus' distress, spoke again.

"Moony, I don't blame you."

"Bullshit", Remus wheezed, finding he didn't feel as sick when he didn't breathe. He just had to contend with dizziness instead.

"Look, I know you can't control the wolf. Me and Sirius were idiots, and I've got to bear the consequences now. And I don't need you acting like a martyr. I need – I need your help, now I'm a werewolf as well."

A hand was offered and Remus took it, wrapping James in a one-armed hug. If either of the boys noticed the other was close to tears, they said nothing. Remus stepped back and brought his arm up awkwardly, pulling it back as if he was about to throw something. His thumb went over his shoulder. James sat on the edge of his bed, discreetly wiping his eyes.

"Lily's here as well", Remus said, "she wants to see you."

James frowned; his eyebrows fell into the circular lenses of his glasses and were magnified slightly. He adopted the confused look Remus had worn when discussing Sirius' behaviour.

"What?" he hissed, compassion and forgiveness all but forgotten. Remus cringed, knowing James wouldn't be any happier than Sirius when he found out he'd told Lily everything.

"So this is what, a Quidditch accident?" he asked in a carrying whisper, waving his bandaged forearm in front of Remus.

Remus turned his head upwards. The ceiling was as white as the walls.

"She knows about what happened".

"About what?"

"That I'm a werewolf and I bit you."

"You told Lily Evans that you're a werewolf and that you bit me?" James echoed, horrified. An accusatory finger poked Remus in the chest, punctuating the words.

Evidently, Lily finding out was as important as being bitten in the first place.

"It sort of came out", Remus muttered, "I was a state yesterday."

"Why does she want to see me?" James asked, more to himself than to Remus. He sat still, brow knitted in puzzlement, running a hand through his hair. Lily had always been cold to him, and their relationship had gone further downhill since fifth year – he knew she blamed him for effectively ending her friendship with Severus. Come to think of it, he couldn't remember a single occasion when she'd actually wanted to see him. Knowing he was now a werewolf should be another deterrent, another reason for her to dislike him.

"I know it doesn't always seem like it, but she does cares about you", Remus said, interrupting James' internal dialogue. "Can I go get her?"

A distracted nod came from James, and Remus turned round, managing to open the curtain this time. Lily stood in front of the Hospital Wing's doors, arms crossed, hugging herself just above her waist. She saw Remus immediately; it was clear she'd been watching the curtain anxiously, and began walking with a nervous skip when he beckoned her over.

Lily slipped past Remus. Pity softened her features as she looked at Hogwarts' newest werewolf.

"Hi James," she whispered.

"Hey Lily", James said, attempting nonchalance but quite clearly upset.

Lily opened her mouth and found there was nothing she could say to console James. Language seemed like such a trite, useless tool. So she shuffled forward and positioned herself on the bed beside James, taking his hand into both of hers, shyly watching him over the slope of her left shoulder.

A prickle of annoyance passed through Remus as he watched the pair, silently content in each other's company. Hand-holding, it seemed, was a sign of friendship for Lily. Any intimacy Remus had associated with the gesture was gone, and he chided himself for attaching romantic notions to it.

James was remarkably reserved; he kept his eyes forward and said nothing, seemingly unfazed by the girl sitting next to him. At one point he did shift his gaze to meet Remus', mouth moving faintly upwards in a tired smile, enough to suggest Remus was forgiven. It was a marked change from his typical behaviour around Lily, which normally involved asking her out, creating increasingly absurd pet names for her that she hated, and making abysmal jokes.

Silence joined the trio behind the screen: Lily looked at James, James looked at the white folds of the curtain, and Remus looked anywhere other than Lily and James. He ended up peering out of the privacy curtain again, just for something to do.

Albus Dumbledore stood almost exactly where Lily had, a grave expression deepening the lines on his face. Standing behind him was a perpetually worried Peter and a sheepish Sirius. Dumbledore spotted Remus, hovering in the opening of the privacy screen, and reached him in a few, sweeping strides, the folds of his blue robes rearranging themselves with every step. Remus felt he could see guilt manifesting itself in others now: a dimming of the eyes, shoulders rounder than usual, the slight drag of a footstep – all signs of inner turmoil, and all shown by Dumbledore.

The headmaster greeted Remus with a handshake. Dumbledore wasn't the type of man to forget pleasantries.

"It is good to see you Remus. I spoke to Poppy yesterday. We were rather concerned at your disappearance. Guilt", Dumbledore faltered for a moment, and his eyes were wells, pockets of past horrors, "can do terrible things to a man". His voice was filled with sand and dust, aged and blunted things. Remus nodded mutely, shuffling back to grant Dumbledore, Peter and Sirius entry through the curtain.

The venerable headmaster had to bow his head to get his wizard's hat under the rail of the curtain. The hat was purple and inlaid with stars. It rather negated the function of the privacy curtain; if anyone was to look in their direction, they'd see a white curtain with a hat poking out the top that only one member of the Hogwarts faculty would even consider wearing. The three new visitors followed Remus and filed round the bed, on which Lily and James were seated. Dumbledore resumed his discussion with Remus.

"Now, James has told me of his desire to keep this— Miss Evans, what are you doing here?"

Lily jumped up, flustered at Dumbledore's presence, a flush creeping up her neck as she found herself on the receiving end of three stares: two questioning, one hostile. Remus was focused on the headmaster, intent on gauging his reaction to the news that he'd bitten James and whether he'd already informed the Ministry.

Lily scooted down the bed, making sure she was an innocent distance from James.

"Oh – er – well, I was visiting James." she managed, clearly nervous. Most students never met the Headmaster, much less spoke to him. Because of this, Dumbledore was a mystery for many of the castle's inhabitants, preceded by his reputation so that the majority of the students hardly ever considered Dumbledore the man. He was awe-inspiring magician, unmatched in skill and ability, with a list of accolades as long as his beard; consequently, he was far removed from their everyday lives. This was not the case for James and Sirius, who were well acquainted with their headmaster, having being sent to his office on innumerable occasions.

"It's ok, sir", James said meekly; Dumbledore was the only teacher who was able to command real respect from the deviant Gryffindor. "She knows about me and Remus."

"Ah." Dumbledore pondered this development. A hand came up to his chin, a V-shape between thumb and fingers, and he stroked his beard in contemplation. "Very well", he said, apparently satisfied, "although I would advise against telling anyone else." he added, a hint of reprimand in his voice. His attention returned to its original source.

"Sorry Remus. Yes, James", and here he received a nod of assent from the boy, "wants to keep the events of Friday night a secret in order to protect you from the Ministry. As I understand it, he and Sirius seem to be culpable for the accident, and as such, they do not feel it would be just if you were punished." He finished with a pointed look at Sirius, who gave a shamefaced nod. At close quarters Dumbledore's height cut an imposing figure.

Remus looked at James, touched by his friend's consideration, and got a thumbs up from his roommate. Sirius was hidden from view by the headmaster, who continued speaking.

"I have fabricated a different version of events. The story we have settled on," Dumbledore met the eyes of every Gryffindor in turn, ensuring he had their full attention, "is that James had sneaked out to Hogsmeade to pick up some beverages, which regrettably, our house elves do not provide, when he encountered a rogue, unregistered werewolf. Once the werewolf bit him it took off. James passed out and was discovered and returned to the school by a villager early the next morning. His memories of the incident are blurry at best."

Dumbledore again surveyed his audience of five, making sure they had understood the fictitious tale.

"James, you will still have to register at the Ministry. I have just sent Fawkes with a message for your parents, detailing your current condition. I expect them to arrive within the hour."

Hands clasped nervously in her lap, Lily worked up the nerve to question Dumbledore.

"But Professor, what happens if someone from the Ministry asks for proof that James was bitten in Hogsmeade?"

Dumbledore looked pleased, rather than affronted, at the question. "I see you have a discerning mind, Miss Evans." The headmaster raised an appreciative eyebrow, causing Lily to blush prettily. "I have a resident of Hogsmeade who will testify our version of events, if required." Regret scratched at Dumbledore's voice, who gave the impression of great age for a moment. He clapped Remus on the shoulder, a show of solidarity between two troubled men, and left with another stoop to navigate the metal rail.

This left the five Gryffindors. No one quite knew what to say. A venomous glare was being directed at Sirius from Lily. Now Dumbledore had gone, Sirius had regained his casual arrogance, and stared back at Lily, looking supremely bored. Several beds down in the Hospital Wing, Madam Pomfrey could be heard berating a hapless witch for trying to get out of bed. The cross nurse threatened to give the apologetic girl several potions.

"Well you guys should probably be off", James said at last, "my parents will be here soon."

Sirius needed no further encouragement, wordlessly stalking through the parting in the privacy curtain, causing the screen to flutter in vertical waves of white. Lily, also silent, slid back down the bed until she was sat beside from James again. She gave him a clumsy, sideways hug, her arms snaking round James' chest for a moment, trying to convey some sympathy. The movement trapped James' arms against his ribs, and he sat stock still, blinking in confusion. Lily relinquished her grip on James after a few seconds, standing and walking briskly out the gap in the privacy curtain past Remus and Peter without a backward glance. This was just as well, because James now looked positively smitten, a silly grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. Peter quirked an eyebrow, at a loss for Lily's inexplicable change in behaviour towards James.

Remus didn't look so amused. Annoyance was dark in his eyes as Lily left. There were stirrings of jealousy in his stomach. A muscle blinked above the corner of his jaw. After a few seconds he seemed to realise he was displaying his feelings, because his face went blank, and he rearranged his features in a pleasant smile, taking a half-step towards James. Not surprisingly, James was lost in his own thoughts - all of them filled with the same pair of green eyes and freckled cheeks.

"Thanks again, James", any distaste he'd shown had vanished now, "I was worried you'd hate me, and – and you're my best friend, so thanks for not pulling a Sirius, and—" Remus tailed off, feeling embarrassed. All of this was lost on James, who was keeping a wistful eye on the gap in the curtain in the hopes of Lily reappearing. He didn't respond.

"You should hear yourself speak Moony", Peter said, grinning at the surprised look on his friend's face. "That was some soppy shit."

Remus gave Peter a playful shove through the curtain, and the pair crossed the Hospital Wing together, trading jokes and insults as if nothing had happened at all. Casual conversation lasted until they opened the double doors to leave the Hospital Wing, coming face to face with Mr and Mrs Potter who wore matching expressions of dreadful apprehension. Remus and Peter remembered there was nothing funny at all about James' predicament. They made their way back to the Common Room in silence.


	13. Who Loves The Sun?

Chapter 13: Who Loves The Sun?

Upon returning to the Common Room, Remus went straight up to the dormitory, intent on taking the backlog of work that he'd put off to the weekend down to the fireplace and working there. Peter had left him to go to the library, saying he'd meet Remus for lunch later.

Sirius was lying on his unmade bed, coffin-like; arms and legs straightened and tucked in, symmetrical among the folds and furrows of linen. Anger was manifest in his hands. They gripped bunches of white by his trouser pockets. He stared at the bulge of his fabric ceiling, ignoring Remus.

Lunch was subdued. The Marauders were at half strength, and Remus and Peter made a brooding pair, planted in the middle of a sea of chattering Gryffindors. Mr and Mrs Potter's expressions had taken on the permanence of memory. They lurked in the corners of Remus' vision, in the shadows of his brain, wearied and damning, external conveyors of all the self-loathing he felt.

The afternoon dragged on, as time often does when one has nothing to measure it against. Sunset in February came just before six. Remus paused, halfway through an Arithmancy exercise, to watch it. The only windows in the Common Room faced west. The Fat Lady, the fireplace and the two staircases leading up to the dormitories held their places on the other three walls in the room.

There were five windows in total. The central window caught the eye first, for both the space it occupied in the centre of the wall, and its design, an elongated diamond of stained glass. It showed a large rose propped up by a thin green stalk. The petals were rendered in two colours, shards of pink and red glass, to give the impression of shadow. As with any other stylised piece in Hogwarts – oil and canvas, stone or steel – it had been charmed into animation. The petals would dance, glass fragments magically shrinking and expanding to slide by each other if there was a wind blowing outside. Every October, the rose wilted, turning gold and then brown. A green bud, no more than an extension of the stalk, would appear overnight, swelling for a week then giving way to new petals which unfurled and reddened, so that by Christmas the rose had blossomed again, a bowl of trembling pink.

The other four windows, set in pairs either side of the decorative centrepiece, were the height of a man, and the width of his palm. One could only approximate the weather by looking out of them: catch a snatch of sky, a hint of white that would suggest a cloud, the lower part brushed green and occasionally white in the winter. Sunlight lanced in horizontally, filling the plain windows with dipping orange, parallel ribbons of light. Four beams were strung across the room, between the windows and the wall above the fireplace. They gave strips of illumination to the wood, which glowed like plates of heated metal.

The rose looked like a grapefruit.

Peter wandered over to the table, using both arms to carry a black tome decorated with the constellations of the Northern Hemisphere. He sat next to Remus and pored over the book, growing frustrated. After twenty minutes, he'd written nothing but his name on the parchment beside him. He leant back in his chair with an exaggerated huff.

"I thought this was meant to be a doss subject", he moaned.

"It's divination, how bad can it get?" Remus asked.

Peter paled. "Next term", he whispered, "we're doing entrails".

"Entrails?"

"Professor Mistovich says, 'Vi are lucky to learn such noble Slavic art'" Peter said in a terrible attempt at a Russian accent.

This was lost on Remus. He'd just noticed Lily, sat beside Alice at the table on the far side of the Common Room, frowning at her homework, a familiar crease between her eyebrows. She glanced up and spotted Remus so quickly he wondered if she knew he'd been sitting there all along. They watched each other for several seconds until Lily returned to her work, smiling to herself. Marlene McKinnon and Julia Pepperwood – the two other sixth year witches in Gryffindor – turned around from the girls' table to see what Lily was smiling about. Remus quickly looked anywhere but Lily, settling on a chess match on the table next to his. Once he felt the girls were no longer eyeing him suspiciously, he returned to his work. Peter gave him a curious look. Remus cursed inwardly, berating himself for being so obvious. Staring at Lily Evans across a crowded Common Room would only lead to questions he couldn't answer.

"Sorry, Pete. James told me about your heroics", he said, figuring flattery would divert Peter from his own distractions. "Sounds like you did pretty well."

Peter grinned. "Thanks. Wasn't going to be much help as a rat, was I? Wish I'd acted sooner though", he mused.

"I'd have bitten you as well then".

"Nah, I reckon I could take a skinny wolf like you".

Remus tossed a ball of scrunched parchment at Peter. He swatted it away with the back of his hand. The parchment projectile sailed across the room and struck a small girl in the back of the head, causing her to start and turn around nervously.

Remus sniggered as Peter held up a hand in apology.

* * *

Half an hour after sunset, James returned to the Common Room. His unexplained absence brought with it a few stares. A couple of paces into the room he was met with a worried Marlene, demanding to know if he was alright and clucking in consternation when he showed his bandaged forearm off under the vague pretence of a 'Quidditch accident'. Managing to shrug her off, James headed straight up to the dormitory, reappearing a quarter of an hour later with Sirius.

Supper was marginally better than lunch. Sirius and Remus weren't on speaking terms and neither felt compelled to offer much in the way of conversation, leaving James and Peter to do most of the talking. Their group of four would lapse into uneasy silence from time to time.

* * *

James was in no hurry to fall asleep that night.

"Oi, Moony!"

Remus rolled over from the wall, tugging himself out of the first stages of slumber to look at James – neither had closed their hangings yet.

"Did you see Lily in the Hospital Wing today? She was all over me!" James said in a carrying whisper, rushing the words in his excitement.

A prickle of annoyance woke Remus further.

"Yeah. Nice one, man."

James continued, failing to notice his roommate's curtness.

"Does she ever talk about me on patrol?"

Quite often, Remus thought. 'Why does Potter pull those stupid pranks?' or something along those lines.

"Er, sometimes".

"What does she say?" James asked, wide-eyed, leaning towards Remus on his elbows. Remus looked back listlessly.

"She was impressed that time in Transfiguration when we'd just started human to animal transfigurations and you turned your hand into a claw before anyone else", Remus muttered, managing to dredge a lone positive comment Lily had made about James from his tired mind.

"Oh", James said, his grin slackening at the mention of schoolwork. "Anything else?"

"Asking her out in public", Remus said, causing James to nod repeatedly, with enough vigour to make himself dizzy, "isn't warmly received".

This was almost as large an understatement as Sirius describing Abbie Fletchley, a pretty Gryffindor witch in the year below, as 'slightly upset', when he'd broken up with her. The poor girl hadn't been dry-eyed for weeks afterwards, remonstrating with Sirius on several occasions in the Common Room.

"I'm gonna give it a week or two before asking her out again, so she's more likely to say yes", James said, boyish insolence softening his features.

Remus could only offer a rictus grin in return. James paid no attention to his fellow werewolf, flipping himself over to see if Sirius and Peter had anything to say on the subject of Lily Evans. He was met with settled snoring from both of them, and fell asleep in short order.

Sleep eluded Remus for some time; he lay awake, digesting what James had told him. He knew he should be happy for James for finally getting on with Lily. But if he was honest with himself, he wanted nothing of the sort. He couldn't deny that he'd grown far too close to Lily these last two days.

Once at Hogwarts, Remus had realised pretty quickly that he could never become romantically involved with a girl; there was every chance she'd discover he was a werewolf, and when she did, she wouldn't want anything to do with him. Not that there were scores of witches queuing up to date a skinny, bookish prefect. Granted, his head had been turned by a pretty girl more than once, but he'd never felt compelled to act on it. And as a result, he'd never really wanted to go out with a girl, or even have what Sirius referred to as a 'conquest'.

But he wanted Lily.

He wanted her green eyes, her red hair, and her tremulous laughs. He wanted every part of her slim ivory body. She'd found him out and she hadn't been repelled. She said she liked him. Remus repeated this fact to himself. He murmured it into his pillow; for a velvet second he held it like gospel to his chest. There was a novel lightness between his ribs. He supposed it must be hope.

Hope was dangerous. It was insistent. It was a type of arrogance, he supposed, that did not listen to circumstance or probability, untroubled by the charismatic Quidditch star, comatose in the bed adjacent to his, vying for the affections of the same girl.

The moon had climbed above the canopy of the Forbidden Forest by the time Remus let his slumberous thoughts overtake him. He wasn't the only one dreaming of blue, figure-hugging jumpers that left little to the imagination.

* * *

So I know this isn't the most exciting chapter, but stick with it because it all happens in the next two!


	14. Ask Me Anything

Sorry for the delay everyone. I hope to have the next chapter up by Thursday.

* * *

Chapter 14: Ask Me Anything

James changed his bandages before breakfast, giving Remus a chance to look at the damage he'd done while his friend vanished the old dressing and began cutting new strips of gauze and medical tape from the materials Madam Pomfrey had given him. His top jaw had left a thick, red curve of ruined blood vessels on the underside of James' forearm, red and purple in colour. Two puncture marks showed where the wolf's canines had been embedded, dark against James' skin.

Remus ran a thumb over his teeth and shivered at the wet squeak of enamel. A hurried grab at his bedside table brought his wand to hand and he dashed into the bathroom, hastily locking the door as nausea resurfaced, thickening the walls of his throat. He sat down quickly, cradling his head in both hands in an attempt to steel himself against the familiar wash of guilt. Self-loathing rose and then settled; he stayed on the cool tiles of the bathroom floor until his breathing normalised and he felt composed enough to stand again. Borrowing support from the lip of the sink, he pulled himself up to find his reflection in the bathroom mirror. A grey, plastic sheen of sweat covered his face, whitening his cheeks and throwing the darker touches of skin under his eyes into sharp relief as a result.

By the time Remus made it out of the bathroom, having showered, brushed his teeth and spent an inordinate amount of time checking his hair for reasons that eluded him, James, Sirius and Peter had already gone down to breakfast. He considered going back to bed but decided against it – he didn't want undue attention from McGonagall for skipping lessons, and Sirius was bound to make a snide remark if he didn't make it to the Gryffindor table.

He managed half a bowl of cereal in the company of some tittering fourth year girls, and traipsed down to the Dungeons for potions. Throughout the lesson he had to contend with curious stares from Severus. His Slytherin counterpart usually hid himself in a corner huddled over his ingredients, but today held himself with an air of smugness, his shoulders thrown back as he watched Remus contemptuously. This unnerved the werewolf. Anything Severus was happy about didn't bode well for him or any Marauder.

Even if you discounted Severus, Remus didn't the best potions lesson. His concentration seemed determined to settle on the table in front of his, where Lily and Alice were working. Every so often his cauldron stirring would come to a standstill as he watched Lily, her lips pursed in concentration, as she cut and arranged her ingredients, tucking a stray strand of red behind her ear now and then. He added the knotgrass he'd chopped to their potion a whole minute late and he could tell his potions partner – a quiet Ravenclaw called Adrian Corrie – wasn't impressed, but the boy hadn't said anything to Remus. The Hiccoughing Solution they eventually produced was navy in colour, some way from the 'dove blue' specified in their textbooks. Slughorn deemed it just 'passable' and gave the boys a stern look. Remus muttered a hasty apology to Adrian before hurrying to Charms.

A voice in the back of his head inquired, innocently enough, why he was rushing to his next lesson. He ignored it.

His step into Flitwick's lesson became a skip when he saw his usual seat, besides an already present Lily, was vacant. She greeted him with a timid smile. As it had yesterday, shyness presided over the pair's first encounter of the day.

"Hey". She looked him up and down. Remus felt himself grow warm before realising she was checking on his wellbeing.

"Hi Lily".

"You feeling okay today?" She asked, looking even prettier when concerned, eyes big and unblinking, the red line of her mouth thinned slightly.

"Yeah", Remus said, trying a smile that slipped straight off and left him wondering why he was lying to Lily, who'd given him nothing but comfort and support. "No. God no. I can't stand it. I'm not sure it gets any easier." Guilt was insistent in his voice, scratching at every syllable. He stared at his inkpot glumly.

"I – oh Remus—"

Her hand found his arm just above the elbow, offering a consoling touch.

"I just – everyone's going on like nothing happened." Remus cast a furtive glance around the room, feeling horribly distanced from the casual conversation of his classmates.

Lily made as if to speak again, but Flitwick called for silence and moved to the front of the classroom. Both prefects turned to face their diminutive professor, effectively ending their conversation.

* * *

In Transfiguration that afternoon, James managed to seat himself between Lily and Marlene, in what was Alice's usual seat. She moved to sit next to Remus, understandably annoyed at being turfed out of her normal spot. Marlene, of course, laughed at everything James said during the lesson, funny or not. Lily laughed occasionally – it was an airy, tremulous note which had all the stirrings of summer behind it. Remus had loved it yesterday. Today it was a grating sound.

Beside him, Alice had noticed his wanderings and leant towards him a fraction, lowering her voice as she did so, mannerisms suggesting she was parting with a particularly juicy piece of gossip.

"I guess it's good they're getting along at last. I think Lily's going to say yes next time he asks her out."

Remus spared her an irritable glance, and returned back to his work without saying anything. Alice seemed to take offence at his reaction and turned away with a frown. There was no further conversation from their bench for the rest of the lesson.

* * *

A corner was rounded. Another ordinary Hogwarts corridor, replete with souring air and packed with portraits which stretched from eye level to the ceiling. It was approaching ten thirty and they hadn't seen a soul – student, teacher or ghost – for over an hour now.

"You seemed to be getting on really well with James", Remus said limply.

Lily gave him an odd look.

"He really likes you, you know", Remus continued.

Lily stopped and turned to her patrol partner. Remus came up a step later and swivelled to meet her stare, diagonal to the floorboards which ran the length of the corridor. In a characteristic motion Lily folded her arms across her stomach and hugged herself, each hand snug between its opposite elbow and her waist. Her thumbs were hidden but Remus could see her fingers, four miniature ribs above her waist.

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked, hurt marring her features.

She felt a lot closer when they were standing still.

"He's a really great guy", Remus continued, a deadpan advert for his roommate. "I know he acts up around you, but once you get to know him better, you'll see he's a really sensitive, compassionate bloke. The cockiness is just a front".

Lily's expression went slack with upset for a few seconds. Anger began to take hold. Her eyes narrowed and sharpened as she stepped towards Remus. They were separated by less than a foot now.

"What do you want me to do Remus? Get friendly with him? Go out with him? Fuck him?"

Lily's eyes were green flint, her voice growing louder with each question. The penultimate word was a caustic jab; it hung in the air, harsh and goading, between the prefects.

They had a captive painted audience now.

Remus' eyes betrayed him; a feral shadow, something dark flitted across his face before he could school his features indifferent.

"Why are you getting worked up about it, anyway?" he shot back, suddenly furious as well.

She gave him a suffering stare that suggested he was missing something obvious and exhaled once, a hot, heavy breath, before turning to stomp off down the hallway.

Remus stalked off in the opposite direction, cursing under his breath.

Many of the portraits and painted subjects began to chatter amongst themselves, enlivened by what they considered to be their entertainment for the evening. In one such painting a poet, advanced in years, turned to his tutee. He sat on a flight of stone steps, plush with ivy, which led up to an abbey. The building was situated in a valley spotted with knots of trees and other smudges of darker green. Specks of white drifted lazily above him.

"Well, I must say", he intoned, in a lyrical, sonorous voice, at a loss to explain the scene he'd just witnessed. "That was a rather rude display", he added, compelled to rhyme. His tutee, a younger man with bronze curls, nodded sagely and began to tune his lyre, the stringed instrument painted into his possession to provide a musical accompaniment to the poet's verses.

Plucking began to sound from the portrait, soft notes flirting with the departing footsteps of two irate Gryffindors.

* * *

Remus stalked across the Common Room, having received a scolding from the Fat Lady for his impoliteness. He took the stairs to the dormitory two at a time and came to the sixth year landing, deciding to take his frustration out on the door, lashing out at it with an open palm. It swung back into the wall with a loud bang, and he had to skip through it before it bounced back and closed in his face. James, Sirius and Peter were playing exploding snap on Peter's bed. They all looked up, startled by the noise. Sirius looked irritated, as he often did, by Remus' presence.

"Remus. We didn't see you there." he said dryly. James laughed, missing the enmity in his friend's voice. Remus, on the other hand, had no problem catching Sirius' sarcasm. His retort was hardly eloquent:

"Fuck off Black."

Peter looked resolutely at nothing. Attempted pacifism came from James.

"You alright Moony? You're back from patrol early", he said, feigning deafness at Remus and Sirius' exchange. James had been unusually quiet in the face of Sirius and Remus' recent antagonism, well aware that his being bitten had caused it.

Remus jerked his head towards them in some semblance of a nod. He stalked to his four-poster bed and fell heavily into it, tearing the hangings closed with enough force to rib the fabric.

* * *

Huge thank you to ForeverLily for including me in her wonderful C2. I know I'm not writing for many of you, so each and every review is appreciated!


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